Peter Tapsell: Has it occurred to the Chancellor that he would not have to borrow so much if he had not lost more than £1,000 million of taxpayers' savings by selling half of Britain's gold reserves at a price almost $200 an ounce lower than the price today? He then compounded that folly by reinvesting the proceeds in, of all things, the euro. If he were a professional fund manager in the City, he would have been sacked long ago for that.

Gordon Brown: We gave our forecast in the Budget. We forecast that consumer spending would rise and that the rate of growth would be slower than last year's, but would continue to be a rate of growth and not decline. I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that that is borne out by events. I will give the next forecast in the pre-Budget report, but if I were the hon. Gentleman I would not believe all the stories I read in the newspapers.

Des Browne: The hon. Gentleman is aware that since the turn of the century our growth rate has been equal to the best growth rates in the world, including the US growth rate. I am interested in, and follow carefully, the shadow Chancellor's consideration the international scene, and I am aware that he has recently been to Estonia. No doubt at some stage he will be able to explain how Estonia provides an analogous model for the British economy. I am also interested in his comments that there has to be much more to our response to global economic change than just reducing tax, and that a tax policy is not a substitute for a proper economic policy. This Government have a proper economic policy and an appropriate tax policy, so to that extent I agree with the shadow Chancellor.

David Heath: In a week in which we have celebrated the Royal Navy with the superlative fleet review—I congratulate all concerned—and in a year in which we remember the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, is it not time for hon. Members to debate the position of people who have suffered hearing loss as a result of service in the armed forces and who are not properly compensated through the armed forces compensation scheme? Early-day motion 306 sets out the case for those veterans.
	[That this House expresses concern that many ex-servicemen and women who have suffered substantial hearing loss as a result of their service in the armed forces are being denied compensation through the armed forces Compensation Scheme; notes that a service person has to suffer a hearing loss of 50 decibels before being compensated, a level often only experienced naturally by elderly people; further notes that this is not the case across the European Union and the Commonwealth, where the qualifying level of hearing loss is much lower; further notes that criteria for compensation ignore the fact that noise-induced hearing loss associated with service brings forward the age at which an individual will experience severe difficulties in everyday communication and social participation; therefore believes that the Government's criteria for assessing compensation for deafened veterans is failing to deliver sufficient recognition for those who have made great sacrifices for their country; and therefore joins RNID and ex-service organisations in calling upon the Government to lower the qualifying level of hearing loss in order to ensure that all those who have served in the armed forces are compensated appropriately for any disability, and that those currently serving their country are not let down when their service ends.]
	Every week, a No. 10 briefing takes place after Prime Minister's questions. As an innovation, will the Leader of the House allow something similar to happen in the House? He could explain what some of the Prime Minister's replies mean. He could explain why in two consecutive weeks the Prime Minister completely contradicted the Paymaster General on tax credits; why, until Hansard helpfully amended it, he said that there was no question of moving to a compulsory identity card; and what he meant by saying that he wanted to scrap rather than reform the common agricultural policy.
	May we have a debate on university science courses? Since 1997, one in three physics courses has closed. Sir Howard Newby, the chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council, has, in a masterpiece of complacency, dismissed physics, maths and chemistry as 19th century disciplines. How myopic can it be to lose this country's science base through a lack of university teaching?
	Lastly, could we have a debate on the subject of Home Office procurement of IT and databases, of which there has been some discussion this week? I remind the Leader of the House of section 39 of the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, which required the establishment of a national firearms register. Eight years later, after the expenditure of £5.4 million, we have no working national firearms register. What does that tell us about the ability of the Home Office to run a sensible database?

Dennis Skinner: Don't tempt fate yet.

Geoff Hoon: I know that this irritates people throughout the country. It certainly irritates me. I use my ability as a consumer to select only ATMs that do not invite me to pay for the privilege of gaining access to my own money, but I realise that ATMs are sometimes located in remote places to provide facilities that would not otherwise be there, and I understand why in those circumstances banks contemplate charging. Nevertheless, the issue is important and I know that Members will raise it with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

Jack Straw: With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the European Union. Earlier today, I published a White Paper on prospects for the European Union covering the next six months when the United Kingdom will hold the presidency. Copies are available in the Vote Office.
	Let me first comment on the current situation in the EU, before coming to the priorities of our presidency. The EU's historic success is centred on three major achievements. It has cemented peace on a continent whose history has been one of rivalry and bloody conflict. It has helped to heal the divisions of the cold war and to entrench liberal democratic institutions in countries emerging from dictatorship. It has created the world's largest international single market of 450 million consumers. All that has brought greater prosperity to businesses and citizens across Europe, while safeguarding the strong attachment to social justice that is common to all Europe's differing economic models. The United Kingdom has benefited greatly from this unique collaboration between nations.
	Yet the EU must adapt both to survive and to prosper in a world quite changed from when it was founded some 50 years ago. It needs, first, better to respond to the sense among European citizens that the EU is remote from the concerns of their daily lives. That was brought into sharp relief by the no votes on the EU constitution by two of its founder members. Compounding that sense of unease is the fact that Europe's economies face greatly increased global competition. Soon, 50 per cent. of all manufacturing exports will come from developing countries. China's overseas trade is doubling every three years; and China and India between them are producing 4 million graduates a year, competing with European firms in the highest-skilled sectors.
	The EU must deal with such competition by becoming more dynamic and by investing more in training and innovation. It has to tackle more effectively new threats to our security from terrorism, proliferation and international crime and to respond to the moral and political imperative of improving living standards and well-being in the world's poorest nations.
	Europe's nations are now beginning an important debate on meeting those challenges. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in Brussels last week, the United Kingdom as presidency will seek to conduct that debate in an open and inclusive way, putting our own views strongly, but respectful of the views of others.
	Alongside the wider questions of the EU's future direction and priorities, there is much specific business to be done during our presidency. Let me take four key areas of the agenda in turn. The first is future financing. As the House is well aware, the European Council could not reach agreement two weeks ago on the EU's next "Financial Perspective", its revenue-raising and spending plans for 2007–2013. For five member states, including the UK, the proposals then on the table were unacceptable; and other member states also had difficulties with them.
	Discussions on future financing will continue under the UK's presidency. Any new financial perspective must, at the very least, set out a process that leads to a more rational budget, shaping the second half of the perspective up to 2013. We recognise our responsibilities as EU presidency and we will work hard to reach agreement on future financing by the end of the year.
	Secondly, there is economic reform. At issue here is not a choice between prosperity or social justice, but what combination of policies can best deliver prosperity and social justice in today's European Union. In that context, we will continue to work for more effective European regulation. The EU will launch in October a major new programme to reduce the volume and complexity of EU legislation in order to ease the burden on business. We will also be looking to improve the policy-making processes with better consultation and impact assessments.
	Meanwhile, we will pursue discussions on the services directive. We will continue work on financial services and on resolving the difficulties over the working time directive in a way that preserves the freedom of individuals to work the hours they choose and that maintains the Government's ability to deliver high-quality health and public services. We will also pursue discussions on the review of the EU's sustainable development strategy.
	Thirdly, there is external relations. Over the next six months, we will chair EU summits with India, China, Russia, Ukraine and Canada, and host a summit jointly with Spain to mark the 10th anniversary of the Euromed process. We will pursue EU work on key foreign policy issues such as the middle east peace process, Iran and EU support for Iraq. The UK will represent the EU at the United Nations millennium review summit in September and follow up Europe's welcome new commitments on increasing aid and on developing a stronger action plan for Africa. We will also be pursuing progress on climate change.
	Mr. Speaker, freer and fairer world trade offers major benefits, not least to Africa. As presidency, and with the European Commission, we will be steering preparations within the EU for this December's meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Hong Kong. Linked to that objective, we will also aim to conclude the discussions on modernising the EU's sugar regime—an important part of the continuing reform of the common agricultural policy.
	The fourth key area of work for our presidency is pursuing the EU's commitments on enlargement. Bulgaria and Romania signed a joint accession treaty with the EU on 25 April this year and are scheduled to join in January 2007. Both still have much to do to implement the commitments that they have made and the European Commission will report on their readiness this autumn.
	Last December, the EU agreed to open accession negotiations with Turkey on 3 October this year—a decision that was reconfirmed by the European Council two weeks ago. Turkish membership of the European Union is a controversial issue for public opinion in parts of Europe, but the British Government remain strongly committed to Turkey joining the EU and I believe that we can draw on the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House. The European Commission yesterday published a draft framework for Turkey's accession negotiations. The EU and Turkey alike stand to gain greatly from a democratic and prosperous Turkey anchored in Europe and from a demonstration that Islam is compatible with the values of liberal democracy, which form the bedrock of the European Union.
	The EU also stands ready to open negotiations with Croatia, provided that it co-operates fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. We strongly support the membership aspirations of the other countries of the western Balkans, but they must, like all other EU applicants, meet the necessary requirements.
	The White Paper sets out the responsibilities involved in holding the EU presidency and a calendar of the main meetings. Alongside the formal meetings, there will be at least 12 informal meetings of EU Ministers, and many other conferences, meetings and events will take place throughout the UK. Today's White Paper, like those before it, is aimed at providing information and material for public and parliamentary debate on the EU . The House will, as usual, have regular opportunities throughout our presidency to discuss the issues and the European Union as a whole.
	The European Union remains central to the UK's prosperity and to its influence in the world. Throughout our presidency and beyond, the Government will maintain Britain's place as a leading European power, helping to shape the EU's future direction in our interests and in the interests of the European Union as a whole.

Liam Fox: I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for his statement and for giving us a copy in advance.
	The rejection of the constitution by the French and Dutch voters presented the leaders of the European Union with a chance genuinely to reform how Europe works. This statement today was the British Government's chance to show leadership in that debate.
	There are, of course, things in the document that we welcome, such as the pursuit of the services directive, the accession of Bulgaria and Romania, and the talks that have begun with Turkey. We also welcome the process of bringing the Balkan states closer to the EU. However, this presidency was the chance to start real reform. Real reform would mean restructuring existing institutions and changing the distribution of powers. That would include bringing powers back from Brussels to the people of Europe.
	Real reform would also mean a radical overhaul of the common agricultural policy, and an end to the assumption that the budget could move only in an upward direction. Real reform requires substance: in contrast, the prospectus set out by the Foreign Secretary is full of rhetoric, contradictions and platitudes. Yet again, the Government are trying to breathe life into the moribund Lisbon agenda. When will they realise that, although the EU can exacerbate economic problems—for example, through the social chapter and over regulation—real reform in the European economy can occur only when member states adopt the sort of supply-side reforms that Conservative Governments in the 1980s introduced in the UK? The Foreign Secretary fought those reforms tooth and nail.
	It is not better regulation that Europe requires, but less regulation. What do we get in the document? Paragraph 26 states:
	"The Commission has requested that Member States draft a brief Lisbon National Reform Programme . . . This will be a high-level political document identifying key national actions to secure progress towards Lisbon objectives. These Programmes will be subject to regular peer review—so that all Member States can work together to share best practice."
	What does all that mean? Does it mean that our economic performance will be reviewed by those continent member states with 19 million unemployed? Perhaps the Prime Minister looks forward to his pep talk from President Chirac, but we know already what best practice is, and we know what works—lower taxes, and less regulation, legislation and government.
	The Foreign Secretary mentioned climate change, and the document's rhetoric continues, stating:
	"Urgent action is needed to tackle climate change at a global level. National or even regional action . . . will not be sufficient."
	You can say that again, because carbon dioxide emissions in this country have increased since the Government came to power. The document is all talk and posturing.
	What about the CAP reform to which the Prime Minister has so recently—and conveniently—been converted? Only the sugar regime gets a mention. So for all the hype we get no idea about the Government's proposals. Do they want to scrap the CAP, or simply move to a rules-based system that is compatible with the World Trade Organisation? Or is it to be a land-management, without production support? Where are the substance and the detail? How much should be funded by national Governments, and how much by the EU, for example?
	The position on the rebate is also unclear. Is it on the table, or not? If it is, what level of reform would trigger its discussion?
	On foreign policy, we are treated to platitudes. On Zimbabwe, the document states:
	"The EU will continue . . . its policy of pressure on the Government of Zimbabwe to respect good governance, the rule of law and human rights."
	Is that all that the Government or the EU can say? Is that what passes for leadership, at a time when the Mugabe regime has all but declared war on its own population? Is that the best that our Government can manage? We must do more to help those who have been left cold, hungry and destitute by a vicious regime.
	On China, the document states:
	"Member States will continue the review of the EU Arms Embargo on China."
	Again, where is the leadership? Does the Foreign Secretary not understand the profound damage that dropping the embargo could do to British defence interests, or American strategic interests, in the Pacific rim?
	Far too much of the document is unambitious, complacent, lowest-common-denominator Eurospeak. We have to ask several questions. Are our Government serious about budget reforms? No, because those reforms will end up costing British taxpayers more, not less. Are they serious about economic reform? No, because all we get is a reheating of Lisbon, with peer review and best practice. Are they serious about institutional reform? No, because instead of powers coming back from Brussels to member states, we get more new bodies and powers. I am sure that the House will be delighted to know that, on top of the bodies that we have at the moment, the proposals mean that we will get the fundamental rights agency and the European gender institute.
	I am afraid that today's document reads like a cut-and-paste exercise. A few new paragraphs make it sound as though the EU has taken notice of what happened in France and the Netherlands, but nothing has really changed. Was the Prime Minister right to say that the constitution represented a sensible set of rules for the future, or was Germany's Europe Minister right to describe it as the birth certificate for the united states of Europe?
	Despite all the talk, all we have had today is the same old centralising direction, with a bit of new rhetoric. This is a momentous time for the EU. For all their talk, our Government have failed in the task of leadership. What a wasted opportunity.

Julian Lewis: It's tough at the top!

Nicholas Clegg: It is indeed.
	I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for the advance notice of the statement on the White Paper, much of which the Liberal Democrats agree with, as we did with large segments of the Prime Minister's widely reported speech to the European Parliament. However, as has been said before, in the European Union the trick is always to translate words into action. The EU has long been distinguished by a tradition of grandiloquence that is not always matched by concrete actions. To that end, I have three questions.
	First, would the Foreign Secretary agree that it is essential that the Government's tone when they talk about reform of the EU is precise and does not appear hectoring or condescending? Does he agree that occasionally, especially when discussing the Government's economic record, an impression is sometimes given that we have all the answers and everybody else is in the doldrums, when—as no doubt he would wish to confirm—the superior economic performance of several other member states suggests that the reality is altogether more nuanced?
	Secondly, given that support from the French Government is so essential to the success of the British presidency in securing progress on budget reform, reform of the common agricultural policy, opening enlargement talks with Turkey and progressing the services directive, what measures are being taken to ensure that Anglo-French bilateral relations are in a sufficiently healthy and robust state to deliver those items in the next six months?
	Finally, given that reform of the CAP assumes a central if not totally dominant place in the ambitions of the Government in their forthcoming presidency, it is a little surprising to see that page 13 of the White Paper contains no more than five fairly short paragraphs on what that reform might involve. Given the essential need for providing further detail on what CAP reform would entail, will the Foreign Secretary give us an assurance that he would be prepared to come to the House at the earliest possible opportunity to explain specifically how it will be implemented in the years ahead?

Patrick Cormack: In wishing the United Kingdom's presidency every success, may I ask the Foreign Secretary whether he will consider an initiative that will involve Members of Parliament from each national Parliament, as well as MEPs, bearing in mind that it is our stated objective to reinforce our belief in a Europe of nation states?

Ian Paisley: When the Prime Minister returned from Europe, he made a statement in the House. I asked him a simple question about the CAP and what would happen. In his reply, he hinted at the fact that there could be a way whereby Governments could interfere and pay subsidy to farmers. When we had another Question Time, I asked the Minister for Europe about that. He enlarged on the issue. Will the Government tell us now what is their policy on the issue, because it leaves farmers in a very peculiar and sad position? Farmers should know exactly what the Government will do on the issue.

Elfyn Llwyd: I perceive that you were desperate for my question, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	Although I appreciate the benefits of a Muslim country acceding to the EU, many of us are concerned about the unqualified support for the accession of Turkey, as it has an appalling human rights record, especially with regard to the suppression of the Kurdish people. May I draw the Foreign Secretary's attention to the withering judgment of the European Court of Human Rights last month in the case of Öcalan v. Turkey? Will he use his best offices to ensure that the Turkish Government comply with that judgment generally, and specifically that they adhere to the basic tenets of human rights with regard to the Kurdish people?

Christopher Huhne: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that following the precedent of the Swedish presidency it is a matter of discretion for the presidency as to whether Council of Ministers meetings are held openly, certainly when legislation is discussed? Will he make a commitment to the House that, under the British presidency, Council of Ministers meetings will be held openly when legislation is being discussed?

Edward Miliband: I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. Does he agree that during our presidency our message should be that where we seek economic flexibility we do so not at the price of fairness but as a route and accompaniment to it, and that we in the UK are building our own version of a social model, drawing on good practice in Europe and elsewhere? Finally, I should like to tell my right hon. Friend that Doncaster will welcome him during our presidency, or we will book for 2018.

Hilary Benn: I could not agree more. The best people to hold to account the Governments who make those commitments are the Parliaments and the electorates of those countries, and the more loudly people express their concern about development and their anger about poverty, the better chance we have of ensuring that those commitments are turned into cash and practical help.
	The other big step forward that we have seen is the agreement on debt cancellation, negotiated with such skill by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It potentially involves $55 billion-worth of debt cancellation, so that developing countries—many of which are in Africa—will no longer be faced with the terrible choice between making monthly repayments that they cannot afford and using the money to buy AIDS drugs and to employ the doctors, nurses and teachers who will make a difference to so many people's lives.
	Aid and debt relief will help, but, as the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) said, Africa will not meet the millennium development goals without faster economic growth. We want to see African economies and their share of world trade double in the next few years, which means increasing their opportunities to participate in the global trading system, investing in infrastructure and reducing the cost of transport. One of the most striking statistics among the many in the Africa Commission's report illustrates that, while it costs $1,500 to transport a car from Japan to Abidjan in west Africa, it costs $5,000 to move it on from Abidjan to Addis Ababa. The high cost of transport in Africa is one of the factors that gets in the way of economic growth and development.
	Everyone in the Chamber knows that our greatest opportunity to enable Africa to break free from the chains of poverty will be at the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong in December. Unless we do everything that needs to be done to allow Africa to trade on fairer terms with the rest of the world, we will deny it the best hope that it has of changing the lives of its people for the better.
	My final point is about partnership, because, in the end, there has to be a commitment on both sides. I have spoken about the contribution that the richer world can make, but Africa, too, has a responsibility to provide peace, stability and good governance. One reason why we should have hope is precisely that in recent years Africa has demonstrated through NEPAD and the African Union its determination to live up to that responsibility.
	A fortnight ago, I was in Rumbek, in southern Sudan, where one in four children die before they reach five years of age and three quarters of all adults cannot read. I do not think I have ever been to a place that has so little. It has been impoverished, brutalised and traumatised by Africa's longest-running civil war, which has claimed 2.5 million lives. I met a group of villagers who had walked from Khartoum to Rumbek, which had taken more than two months. I particularly remember talking to a young woman by the name of Josefina, who was 19, and her brother Stephen, who was 11. Their mother had abandoned them and they had walked to Rumbek with their fellow villagers. I asked Josefina whether Stephen went to school, and she said he did not. When I asked why, she told me that the only school in Rumbek charged fees, and she had no money to pay them. Only with the peace deal will Rumbek and southern Sudan have the chance of a better future. As part of our obligation, we are providing more than £100 million to Sudan this year, in addition to the support that we are giving to the peace mission in Darfur.
	Only through peace and stability will southern Sudan have the chance of a better future. The situation there teaches us that, even with the doubling of aid, the cancellation of debt and the opportunity of fairer trade, if people continue to fight one another, there will be no development or progress. Sudan and other countries remind us of that challenge. That is why we are right to provide support to build African capacity and to undertake more peace support operations across the continent. That is also why we are right to put money into education, so that people like Stephen in southern Sudan can have the chance to go to school. That is why we are right to put in money to meet the financing gap in regard to the fight against HIV and AIDS, and why Britain will be hosting the replenishment conference for the global fund in September.
	In the end, this is all about one thing. It is about building capacity, without which Africa will not be able to tap its potential. Its countries need good governance, an independent judiciary, a lively civil society, and civil servants with skills. They need to fight corruption and to create a climate in which people from Africa and beyond will want to invest their money. In the end, capacity is about Governments who are able to deliver, and about people who have an expectation that their Government might be able to do something to improve their lives. I learned that lesson more forcefully than anywhere else on my first visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, when President Kabila told me that the challenge that his country faced was not to restore people's faith in the Government but to persuade them, for the very first time in their lives, that there might be something called a Government who had something to offer them. Above all, the future of Africa rightly lies in the hands of its people and their Governments.
	There are many hon. Members in the Chamber today, and I look forward to hearing what they have to say. They will know that Africa is as full of potential, creativity, talent and hope as any other continent on the planet, and those qualities are waiting for the opportunity to be set free. We need to see Africa in all its complexity. If people continue to look at it as a continent only of war, pestilence, famine, disease and starvation, we will not see the real Africa underneath that is struggling to come up. In the end, it is the power of the political process in African countries and in the world that offers us the best hope of a better future. What is remarkable about the people who will gather in Scotland this weekend is that they look to the G8 and the political process to change things for the better.

Andrew Mitchell: A number of factors converge to focus the eyes of the world on Gleneagles next week. Britain holds the presidencies of the G8 and the European Union; we will have a strong voice at the World Trade Organisation talks in December; and it is the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. Thanks to a well organised and positive campaign, the public's desire to make poverty history has become an almost tangible force in the run-up to next week's summit. That presents the leaders of the eight most powerful nations with a great opportunity but also with a great challenge.
	Next week in Edinburgh, it is not only the heads of African Government who will be held to account but the leaders of the richest, most powerful countries in the west, as the public are keen to see their spirit of compassion and good will reflected in the actions of their leaders. They are watching to see that in this year of opportunity politicians live up to the task, so that generosity is matched by the determination to ensure that every penny released for development is spent properly. Good intentions must be translated into effective results on the ground. Next week, the G8 leaders must channel the tremendous good will over the past few months into effective action for the world's poor. If they do not do so, they will fail the 30,000 African children who die unnecessarily every day, and they will fail the people of their own nations who demand real and effective action.
	Accountability is the key, and that is what the Opposition will push for. The Conservative party fully welcomes the current political landscape of consensus on development issues. As the Secretary of State knows, we stand foursquare behind him on the Government's push for a comprehensive deal on aid, trade and debt. I am delighted by the emergence of a united British agenda on international development. I pay tribute to my predecessors, including my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who is in the Chamber today, as they have worked hard to secure that unity of purpose. I am proud to have been appointed to my current post at a time of such opportunity. This is not a party political issue, and we will not seek to oppose for opposition's sake. However, the debate must be more than merely an exchange of pleasantries. While we commend the spirit of the Government's approach, the Opposition think that there are things missing from it. There is a serious danger that the Government will focus too much on headline figures and inputs, and not enough on ensuring that those inputs translate into concrete improvements in the lives of the poor. That would offer no solution to the people of Africa, and no satisfaction to the people of the G8 nations. On behalf of both those groups, we will hold the Government and their G8 counterparts to account.
	Africa is the world's biggest continent. It consists of 51 countries with hugely diverse cultures and histories, where more than 1,000 languages are spoken. As the Secretary of State has just said, we should be wary of excessive generalisation when talking about Africa, but the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are, broadly speaking, united in poverty, which is acute, prolonged and worsening. Africa is the only continent in the world to have grown poorer in the last generation. People around the world, particularly in India and China, are creating wealth and gradually escaping from poverty. Africa's share of world trade, however, has halved. Poverty is increasing and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham has said, life expectancy is falling.
	Today, like yesterday and tomorrow, 8,000 people in Africa will die from HIV/AIDS, 7,000 people will die of hunger, and 6,000 will die from water-borne diseases—90 per cent. of malaria cases are in sub-Saharan Africa. At least 25 million people are HIV-positive, and 12 million children have lost one or both of their parents to AIDS—12 million is more than the number of children in Britain. A total of 100 million children are missing out on school. Their school fees—I learned in Uganda that they are often less than £5 a term—are too expensive for their parents to meet. Denied an education, they are condemned at birth to a life of failure, their intellectual growth stunted just as the growth of their nation is stunted by poverty, and their talent is wasted forever.
	Africa's children are like our children—they laugh the same, play the same, and suffer the same. In South Africa, people spend more on burying their dead than they do on food and clothing for their families. In the global village, we cannot ignore such suffering. In the face of that situation, it is truly appropriate that the question that will dominate the G8 meeting next week is what politicians in rich countries should do to reduce poverty and promote development in poor countries. For the millions of AIDS orphans and for all those children not in school there is no more important question. There are, however, no easy answers. Africa needs much more than good intentions. It needs co-ordinated, focused and effective assistance from the developed world and good policy from its national governments—a partnership, as the Secretary of State said.
	I deliberately stress the need for good policy from African Governments. Bad Governments pursuing bad policies are the major reason why Africa is poorer today than it was 50 years ago. If the G8 countries are serious about helping Africa, they must face that unpleasant fact, and use their diplomatic and financial influence to create incentives for African governments to govern well. They must be unflinching in their condemnation of those Governments who perpetuate poverty and wage war on their own people. The title of our debate is "Helping Africa to fight poverty", and ultimately it is the responsibility of African governments and the African people to fight poverty.
	Our actions should be enabling. They may help to create the necessary conditions for progress in Africa, but they are not sufficient in themselves. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General has said that
	"the struggle for development has to be carried on mainly in developing countries and by their people."
	We must not use bad governance as an excuse to turn our back on those 12 million AIDS orphans. There is much that the G8 leaders can, and must, do to assist those African governments who are genuinely committed to helping their people escape poverty.
	First, we want to see a big increase in the quality and volume of aid. I welcome the consensus in British politics on the UN's 0.7 per cent target. As well as increasing the amount of aid that we deliver, we must secure international agreement to achieve a dramatic improvement in the quality of aid. We should be candid about the record of aid in the past. Some aid has been spectacularly successful. It supported the eradication of smallpox, for example, saving millions of children from a painful death. In Kampala 10 days ago I saw how British aid is helping to support 140,000 families affected by HIV/AIDS. I met people who are alive today because of British generosity. I visited the Kitovu hospital run by the CAFOD-sponsored Medical Missionaries of Mercy. Everyone in that hospital was working together to save lives with limited resources. I pay tribute to the work of those amazing people at that hospital and to all those who volunteer. They show us what can be achieved.
	I want all our aid to be that effective, yet much aid in the past has been wasted, ending up in Swiss bank accounts or the pockets of arms dealers. Too often, aid has been characterised as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. No part of the planet has received more aid and done less with it than Africa. We will secure public support for increased aid only if we take decisive action to prevent that from happening again. The public are sceptical. A poll for The Daily Telegraph has shown that 83 per cent. of people are not confident that money given by the west would be spent wisely. It also shows that 79 per cent. of voters believe that corruption and incompetence are to blame for Africa's problems.
	After the summer, when the G8 conference is packed away, our electorates, the people of the developed world, will look to their leaders to ensure that the vast amount of money raised is spent properly. We must outline clearly how the money is to be spent, and we must put in place clear, transparent structures to account for the money. The G8 leaders must be able to monitor precisely where our money goes. I hope the Secretary of State will look carefully at structural ways of ensuring greater transparency and accountability in the way aid moneys are spent. Our taxpayers will demand nothing less.
	Our aid should help to support efforts to develop the institutional and legal preconditions for growth and sustainable poverty reduction. It should be used to reward and encourage countries which establish a framework of transparent institutions, which respect the rule of law and human and property rights, and which promote free trade between individuals and between nations. Where we work with Governments, we must expect them to be fully and openly accountable for the funds that they receive. There should be no more second chances for tyrants and no more benefit of the doubt for corrupt dictators.
	In badly governed countries, we should distribute aid through the small platoons of motivated, dedicated NGOs which are already doing such good work in the developing world. Such money should be disbursed through the Department for International Development, which is focused on output, rather than through the inefficient European Union.
	We face huge challenges and we have only limited resources, so it is vital that we spend our aid where it will do the most good. That means supporting specific, effective, accountable investments in vaccine research and the provision of basis health and education services. We should draw up a priority list and stick to it. The Copenhagen consensus priorities of tackling HIV/AIDS, malnutrition and malaria are a good place to start.
	We need to conduct a rigorous investigation into the merits of direct budget support, as opposed to project aid. Clearly, both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, but the British people will rightly be sceptical about giving their hard-earned money to Governments who are not fully accountable and transparent.

Andrew Mitchell: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. TB is of course coterminous with AIDS, and he makes his own point correctly.
	The Department for International Development has earmarked £45 million for direct budget support to Malawi in the period 2003–06, despite the fact that the Department acknowledges that the country has
	"weak economic and financial management".
	Can the Secretary of State assure us that the money will be well spent? In Uganda, 50 per cent. of the budget comes from aid. What impact does that have on the behaviour of the Ugandan Government? Does it undermine their accountability to the Ugandan people?
	I turn to the proposed international finance facility. That is a very clever way of front-end loading aid funding, but many questions remain unanswered. How exactly will the extra money be spent? How will we avoid the risk of a dramatic reduction in aid levels after 2015? What guarantees can be given that our aid will indeed be more effective if spent sooner rather than later? If the limiting factor is absorptive capacity on the ground, there is a real risk that aid could be subject to significantly diminishing marginal returns.
	The international finance facility for immunisation is a very good idea indeed. Vaccinating children against disease is surely one of the most effective ways to spend our money. Children's lives can be saved for just a few pennies. In the 20th century we eradicated smallpox from the planet and we made great progress on polio. In the 21st century why can we not eradicate malaria from the planet, or even HIV/AIDS? In the face of diseases that cause such suffering, we cannot set our sights too high. One of the major priorities for the extra resources released at the G8 should be preventive health care and the provision of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. We must ensure that all the money raised by the main IFF is used as productively as that. Furthermore, the immoral and unethical poaching of doctors and health workers from the third world to work in our country—health workers who are desperately needed back in their own communities—should be ended immediately.
	I come now to debt relief. The last Conservative Government led the world in providing debt relief for poor countries. We welcome the progress that has been made on bilateral debt relief and will urge other countries to follow Britain's lead. We welcome the recent deal on multilateral debt. Well managed debt relief has produced many success stories. Mozambique's debt relief has enabled its Government to immunise 500,000 children. Benin eliminated school fees in rural areas, allowing thousands of children to attend classes for the first time. That is what debt relief can and must achieve, but we need to ensure that all the money freed up in this way is spent on fighting disease and educating children. We must put in place robust measures to ensure that the money released by debt cancellation is used to fight poverty. We must match generosity with practicality, acting to ensure that the money released by debt relief is put to good use.
	The most effective way of helping African countries to develop is to free up markets for their trade. Although trade policy is a matter to be decided formally at the EU and the World Trade Organisation, it is right that trade measures to help the developing world are very much on the political agenda at the G8. I reiterate our position. Protection for developed countries at the expense of the developing world is both immoral and hypocritical. It must come to an end. For every pound that rich countries give to poor countries in aid, those countries lose £2 through our protectionist trade barriers. Over the past four years, £20 billion has been spent by the EU on agricultural export subsidies to Africa. That is a waste of European taxpayers' money and a direct cause of African impoverishment.
	I am horrified by the French attitude to the reform of the CAP.

Andrew Mitchell: My hon. Friend lays before the House a most important point.
	The common agricultural policy hurts British taxpayers and consumers and is detrimental to the interests of poor countries. It encourages overproduction, distorts prices, imposes high tariffs on imports and subsidises exports. The Government must not let French intransigence prevent them from pushing for reforms of the CAP which will benefit the poor. We will press the EU to reduce agricultural tariffs and to end export subsidies. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) is saying a number of interesting things today about the reform of the CAP. I hope the Government will want to take up his sensible agenda.
	The dumping of state-subsidised produce on poorer countries is an abuse of the market. America should be taken to task for its outrageous cotton subsidies, which impoverish the people of Africa. What steps are the Government taking to equip poor countries to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the multilateral trading system overseen by the WTO? Does the Secretary of State agree that a lack of the necessary expertise all too often prevents poor countries from taking full advantage of the system? What further consideration has he given to our proposal to create an advocacy fund to help poor countries fight their corner in international negotiations and to ensure that they are not outgunned in trade disputes? He will want to consider the important points made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition at yesterday's Prime Minister's questions.
	The experience of Africa since independence has not been one of undifferentiated failure, and there are beacons of hope and cradles of development from which the rest of the continent can learn. For example, Botswana has had the fastest growth in income per person of any country in the world during the past 35 years. It is a stable, well governed country and a multi-party democracy, and the benefits of its considerable diamond wealth have been spread fairly widely. According to Transparency International, Botswana is the least corrupt country in Africa, and its Government have taken a firm stand against corruption. When I visited Botswana last year, I was impressed by the anti-corruption posters on every street corner. Of course, the problem for Botswana is that all this is threatened by an HIV-prevalence rate of 30 per cent.
	Let us be honest—the people of Africa have suffered from some of the worst Governments in the world. It is polite to refer to that point as "the governance issue", but the euphemism betrays those Africans who encounter police as a uniformed protection racket, customs officers not as people who protect their children from drugs but as extortionists who have bought their posts and need to make them pay, or judges not as neutral administrators of justice but as servants of the rich and powerful. To people from Darfur whose villages have been razed or to Zimbabweans whose homes have been burned, the word "governance" is a shameful, almost wilful, dodging of the issue, and the G8 leaders should act on that matter next week.
	This Government have not always lived up to their rhetoric about crimes against humanity in Africa. As President Mugabe's repression gets worse, they still do nothing—meanwhile, China supplies him with arms. In the debate following the statement on the Commission for Africa, the Secretary of State said that he felt the people of Africa would hold their leaders to account through the democratic process. I hope that he will at least concede that things are not going entirely as he had hoped. African Governments have remained resolutely silent over the policies of state terrorism exercised by President Mugabe in Zimbabwe, except, of course, for President Mkapa of Tanzania, who is a member of the Commission for Africa and who earlier this year in a BBC interview praised his "brother" for his brave anti-colonial stance.

Andrew Mitchell: The hon. Lady is right, and I have made the point that more action should be taken.
	I am not talking about white farmers, although their treatment has been appalling and unjust. I am talking about the estimated 250,000 black Zimbabwean citizens who have been brutally ejected from their homes, which have been destroyed, and left without shelter or sustenance because they were suspected of voting for the opposition in the last election. I am talking about the many millions more who are starving and dying in the country at large for belonging to the wrong tribe, for having the wrong political allegiance, or simply because they are the random victims of policies that have reduced a once-thriving country to penury. We were told that public criticism of Mugabe's regime by donor Governments would be counterproductive and that we should allow Mugabe's peers and neighbours to use quiet diplomacy and economic leverage to ameliorate his policies. From here, that quiet diplomacy looks far more like spineless consensual silence.
	As for Ethiopia, which is run by another of the Prime Minister's friends, Meles Zenawi, the African Union, explaining its silence about the recent murder of more than 20 opposition supporters on the streets of Addis Ababa, said that it had more important issues to deal with.
	Neither protestors, nor politicians, nor rock stars will be able single-handedly to make poverty history, which is a task that can be accomplished only by the efforts of African countries themselves. People, not Governments, create wealth, but there is much that our Government can do to make that task easier: we can champion and reward good government; we can give more aid and make sure that it is spent well; and we can allow people in poor countries to trade with people in rich countries without hindrance. However, the ultimate success or failure of the British presidency of the G8 will be judged not by inputs—the headline figures on aid or debt—but by outcomes. How many children will it save from an early death and how many poor countries will it enable to become more wealthy? We have a duty, both to people in developing countries and to the hard-working British taxpayer, to see that the money released for development in 2005 is well spent.
	Good intentions and generous spending alone achieve nothing. If we are to make poverty history, we must match compassion with realism and generosity with practicality. Although we should recognise the crucial role of aid in reducing immediate human suffering, we should also remember that the only sure road out of poverty is wealth, spurred on by property rights and freedom under the rule of law. Reforming immoral, hypocritical and pernicious trade barriers and subsidies would do more to help sub-Saharan Africa than anything else.
	We fully support the Prime Minister and the Government in their determination to act this year, but we will monitor them closely and hold them accountable for the hopes they have raised, both at home and in Africa. My signal to those marching to Edinburgh—many of us will be marching with you—is that we will not allow your expectations to be let down. Failure by the leaders of the G8 to seize this moment of opportunity would be a betrayal of their own citizens as much as of the poor, the sick and the destitute in Africa. The Government must not squander the emotional capital that they have earned, which is why we will support them in the noble aims and aspirations that they will champion at Gleneagles next week. I hope that they will draw strength from our determination and support and from the faith of those across the world who will be watching.

Mark Durkan: I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to address the House for the first time, in this important debate. I thank not just the Government for this timely debate, but the Secretary of State, not just for his contribution to the debate but for the immense efforts and determined initiative that the Government have shown on this issue—not just in the run-up to the G8 and the creation of the Commission for Africa, but dating right back to the creation of the Department for International Development and the policy reloading that that brought.
	I stand here proud to uphold the values of the Social Democratic and Labour party—a party of consistency and persistence, as we have stood for non-violence, democracy and partnership as a better way to a better Ireland; and a party that is solidly social democratic, unashamedly Irish nationalist, but determinedly internationalist.
	Of course I am conscious that I am more than an SDLP MP. I stand here democratically honoured to represent the interests of all the people of Foyle—whether they voted for me or for other parties' candidates, and whether they share my political beliefs or hold other views, different from mine but no less legitimate for that.
	I also know my duty not just to speak up for my party or stand up for my constituents, but also to look out for the needs and rights of other citizens of this world. So it is in this debate on addressing poverty in Africa that I make my maiden speech. This carries some continuity from my predecessor, John Hume, whose last Prime Minister's question, earlier this year, was on this very same crucial issue.
	The shadow Secretary of State mentioned that we are 20 years on from Live Aid—and 20 years ago this month, along with John Hume, I went on to a boat in the port of Derry, in my constituency, and met six stowaways from Ethiopia—refugees. Within days, the Home Office gave three of them refugee status and three exceptional leave to remain. Twenty years on, as we go towards Live8 and we face new African issues, we have to ask what prospects those people would face if they arrived now—just as the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) raised questions about what we are doing with refugees from Zimbabwe now.
	This debate will be full of echoes of the challenging things that Bono, among others, has said to us all about Africa. I agree with them all, just as I applauded Bono for hailing John Hume as a hero, and Seamus Mallon as a giant of Irish politics. There might be spin games in Northern Ireland about who won the war and speculation about who will win the peace, but there can be no doubt about who won the argument. With John the architect and Seamus the engineer, the SDLP provided the blueprint and the construct of the Good Friday agreement.
	The key precepts of that agreement were first spelled out in a 1972 SDLP paper, "Towards a New Ireland", which was in two parts, one offering the political argument and the other an institutional model. It will surprise no one in the House to hear that John Hume was the primary author of the rationale, but it may surprise Members to hear that a major contributor to the model outline was Kadar Asmal—then a law lecturer in Dublin and head of the Irish anti-apartheid movement. Since then, of course, he has been Minister for Water, and more recently Minister for Education, in a democratic South Africa.
	In getting his ideals to prevail, John Hume led our community from grievance to governance. In a different context, with hugely different challenges, the African National Congress led their people from grievance to governance. In the debate on Make Poverty History, some people raise questions of governance almost as a dismissive counterpoint to the demand for debt relief, proper aid and fair trade. But there can be no sustainable solution to the governance questions in Africa without radical and durable resolution of Africa's grievances. Wrong as they have been, it is not the bad behaviour or poor performance of some African regimes that created the inequities and iniquities of the world economic order that handicap that continent.
	In no way can the challenges facing Northern Ireland be equated with the mass suffering that afflicts so much of Africa. My own constituency of Foyle suffered death and destruction in the Troubles, and has endured structural neglect and under-investment for decades. It shows up in the league tables as having the highest unemployment, the worst rates of long-term unemployment and high rates of economic inactivity, and many of its wards are among those with the highest concentrations of multiple deprivation, including child poverty and fuel poverty. I will be returning to those and related issues in future debates, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	But there is another league table that Derry consistently tops—that for popular giving to support development aid and combat poverty in Africa and other developing countries. I believe that that stems from a spirit not just of charity but of solidarity. Derry is more forward-looking and outward-looking than many people know, as is evidenced in the great work of so many schools, Churches and other groups in the Make Poverty History campaign and for other causes.
	Derry should not just be defined by the sort of stark indicators that I mentioned earlier, without also being described by its tradition of self-help, its pathfinding partnerships, its cultural offering, its working aspiration to be a "city of learning", and the enterprise shown even against difficult odds. So I know too that although all Africans want us to focus properly on the ills of poverty, disease, hunger, child mortality and lack of education and health services, they also want us to recognise their good endeavours, their initiative, their cultural vibrancy, their talents and their ambitions. They want us to recognise their efforts to grow out of poverty, to invest properly, to foster enterprise and deliver community-based development, to combat disease, to provide safe water, to keep children alive to school age and then to guarantee them a school.
	It is when we see both what Africans are offering, as well as what Africans are suffering that we get a fuller sense of the compound injustice of their position. We cannot see corruption in African Governments and be blind to the corruption of an international economic order that locks people in poverty and stunts democracy, while mouthing "private enterprise" and "good governance" as a modern version of "Let them eat cake". We cannot preach property rights while we deny production rights.
	The Make Poverty History campaign has three demands—debt relief, more and better aid, and trade justice. Debt relief is not just about writing off African mistakes. It is about righting a world wrong. Debt relief means allowing Africa to focus more of its own spending on its own potential, its own needs, rather than on liabilities that it should not owe anyone. It will release important margins of African countries' gross national product for investment in vital services such as health and education. It should mean that the benefits of economic growth allow more Africans to make a living, rather than allowing banks and institutions to make a killing.
	I welcome the debt relief package for the poorest countries, brokered by the Chancellor with his G8 colleagues. Its value should not be underestimated, nor should it be overestimated. We need to recognise that many poor peoples in regions of hardship will not benefit directly. We also need to realise that funding debt relief from aid budgets can be seen as robbing Peter to pay Peter. More remains to be done. I believe that the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for International Development will try to get more and better, through, for instance, sponsorship of the international finance facility.
	The second demand is for aid levels to rise to 0.7 per cent. of GNP. That target was set and promised as long ago as 1970, and has been set again many times by many countries. We now have the solemn commitments of the millennium development goals, which are not just about overall aid levels but about very specific outcomes in education, health, housing, safe water and so forth.
	Judged on our record, our promises mean little or nothing. We are hardly in a position to preach to Africa about performance and delivery standards from Government. New promises on aid are overdue, but still under-reliable. Such commitments should be absolute and should do exactly what it says on the tin, with no more evasions consisting of micro-statistical comparisons with what others are not doing, or attempts to include popular donations to aid agencies. That applies not just to the G8 but to all countries, not least EU countries and particularly—for me—Ireland. I entirely back the case for targeting and tracking increased aid, but that proper priority should not be an excuse for our lack of urgency and diligence in living up to earlier promises.
	The third plank is trade justice: allowing people a fair price for what they produce, allowing African countries to add value to what they produce, and allowing them to grow their way out of poverty. It must involve ending the travesty of their having to scale the high dam gates of protection tariffs around us when they struggle to avoid drowning as we flood their markets by dump-pouring goods below world prices.
	While there are some critics of the case for debt relief and aid, none of us parliamentarians are being actively lobbied against them. That will not be the case when it comes to some of the issues in the world trade round building up to December. Interests in or near our constituencies will bring us legitimate concerns, as businesses or unions. Organised interests will lobby us on the implications and complications of trade round choices. In that confusion and concern, and after the hype of Gleneagles, we must not be tempted to fall for the Meatloaf standard that "two out of three ain't bad". We must not decide that trade justice can wait while we let better aid and debt relief work. Africa needs justice now—not two thirds of justice, but all of it.

Andrew MacKay: It is a huge privilege to follow the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). Nearly everyone in the House was delighted when he won a very difficult election in his constituency last month. He is a courageous politician who has had a distinguished career in Northern Ireland, most recently in the Executive and the Assembly. It was typical of him that his speech was not just about the Province, but was an international speech in a significant international debate. He also used the opportunity to point out, rightly, that the city he represents and loves, Derry, is a big city with a big heart, which looks outwards as he did. I hope that he will ably represent his constituency for many years to come.
	This has been a significant debate in another respect. In my experience, there have not been many occasions on which we have heard two such fine speeches from the Front Benches. The Secretary of State is respected in all parts of the House for his huge enthusiasm but also for his hardnosed realism, matched with a rare eloquence. We have high hopes that he will continue his good work throughout this Parliament. I hope that the Prime Minister, or his successor, will not be so unwise as to move him in a reshuffle, because we need him in his Department for the entire Parliament.
	I am delighted that my hon. and very good Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) is the shadow Secretary of State. He has the eloquence but also the financial expertise to make a large contribution. I think that the two of them will work very closely together.
	There are plenty of opportunities in the House for us to have rigorous debates, to play the party-political game, to score points and also, perhaps, to thoroughly enjoy ourselves. Increasingly, however, I have noticed that that is a thing of the past in the context of international development, and the speeches we have heard so far have illustrated that very well.
	Having said all that, I hope that the Secretary of State will forgive me if I draw attention to areas of concern as well as areas of consensus, as he rightly said that he wanted to listen carefully to the whole debate.
	It is taken as read, as hon. Member for Foyle rightly pointed out a few moments ago, that there are many aspects to this debate. It is essential that more funds be made available for Africa—that is agreed—but it is also essential that that money be well spent. The hon. Gentleman was also correct when he said there is no point in trying to create an enterprise culture if the first bricks are not in place. The first bricks have to be education and health, but they also have to include good governance. There also has to be a level playing field.
	I have criticised before our American allies and our European partners, who are the two principal culprits. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield rightly criticised the common agricultural policy, which we have to work to change. It is not just overburdening our contribution to the EU and its budget, which is bad enough; what it is really doing is ruining farmers across the third world, but particularly in Africa. We have to put great pressure on President Bush and on Congress every time that we meet American politicians. We have to point out the harm that their food subsidies are doing to Africa. This American Administration rightly see the problems in Africa. They are being financially very generous, but most of that will be largely wasted if they do not reform their own subsidies.
	Most of all, we have to continue to fight against corruption, bad government and abuse of human rights in Africa. The right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke), who is a considerable expert in this field, chided us by saying that Zimbabwe is not Africa. To that degree he is right, and the Secretary of State pointed out the many success stories, but the Secretary of State also rightly pointed out the failures. I hope that the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill will bear with me if I spend most of the remaining few minutes of my speech talking about Zimbabwe, not least because his Government and the Leader of the House have not behaved well in failing to get a Minister to make a statement at the Dispatch Box on Zimbabwe, particularly bearing in mind the outrageous acts of the Mugabe regime, which has demolished so many houses for political purposes and abused human rights. I have no facility to express my concerns other than that which attaches to this debate.
	Although the Secretary of State was right to say that wherever possible, our aid should go direct to Governments in Africa—democratically elected, one hopes—who can then choose how best to spend that money, that clearly cannot be so in Zimbabwe. He and I had an exchange on this issue during questions yesterday, and I hope that when the Under-Secretary winds up, he will further confirm that where doubt exists—there is no doubt in Zimbabwe: it is a clear-cut case—and there is fear of corruption and the abuse of human rights, we will concentrate more on the non-governmental organisations and less on giving money to the Government in question. Only when we are satisfied that there is good governance and a lack of corruption can the money go to that Government. That is very important indeed.
	It is tragic that we have not intervened—I do not mean militarily—to put greater pressure on Zimbabwe, and that we have allowed Mugabe to abuse his people. We have to ask ourselves why, when action is taken against wrongdoing regimes in the Balkans, the middle east and Afghanistan, it has not been taken in Zimbabwe. It is so condescending to African people to say, "Oh, it's different. We don't want to upset Africa. We have to do things gently." Initially, I accepted that the situation should be dealt with through the African Union, of which I am a big supporter. As the Secretary of State pointed out earlier, the African Union has done some good, particularly in the Sudan, the Congo and the Central African Republic. In Zimbabwe, however, its record has been disgraceful—as has, I am afraid, the record of President Mbeki. I am great supporter of what has happened in South Africa: the transformation since apartheid has been quite remarkable and the reconciliation achieved has been deeply significant. Yet there remains a complete blind spot over Zimbabwe. When we see the President of Tanzania positively applauding what is happening in Zimbabwe, it sends a shiver down one's spine. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield mentioned that earlier.
	We have to put greater pressure on our African friends to take action in Zimbabwe and we need more effective sanctions. It is possible to apply more effective and sharper sanctions and it is possible to take action against the deeply revolting business men in this country who are helping to fund the regime in Zimbabwe. We know who they are and we know where they live: it is time that enforcement officers in this country, perhaps emboldened by fresh legislation, took action against them.
	I conclude by saying that I hope that all these issues are properly taken into account during this deeply significant week with the G8 meeting at Gleneagles. If we just throw money at the problem and do not resolve the other issues, the effort will largely be wasted, which would be a very great pity indeed.

Michael Meacher: I welcome my right hon. Friend's opening speech, which was excellent, spoken with passion and eloquence and, if I may say so, on the back of a good ministerial track record. I must however add that the congratulatory, nodding consensus across the Floor of the House on this subject is beginning to turn my stomach. I shall want to make some critical comments, but I believe that Gleneagles is a defining moment for this Government. There are a few rare occasions that expose the moral tenor of our times, and the Africa/climate change G8 may turn out, in the breadth of its positive vision, to be one of them. Given the sheer scale of what is being attempted and given that the British Government have been the prime impetus and driver behind the whole project, it must be said that if this can succeed, it will be one of the most important achievements—perhaps the most important achievement—of the Labour Government so far.
	Securing international agreement on wiping out multilateral debt owed to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for 18 of the world's poorest countries, relieving them immediately of £22 billion of debt—a sum that might well be increased to about £28 billion in the next 12 to 18 months with the inclusion of a further nine very poor countries—is unquestionably a huge achievement. The significance of the deal is that dirt-poor countries such as Mozambique, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia, which are now obliged to spend more each year on servicing the debt by paying the interest than on their entire health or education budgets, will now at last have a chance to begin the fight to escape extreme poverty.
	The United Nations Development Programme report of a few weeks ago projected that on current trends—that is, before the current deal—there would be 5 million deaths of babies and infants under five in Africa over the next decade. That figure will now be significantly cut as a result of the deal—though, of course, not by enough. I believe that the doubling of aid from $50 billion to about $100 billion a year is still needed in addition. Earlier in the debate, there was some question about the purpose of aid. I believe that its purpose is to build roads and infrastructure, and to put in place the health, education, training and other public services that are necessary for decent welfare and the economic take-off that the private sector will never provide on its own.
	I know that President Bush is saying a bit more today, but the current US offer of $675 million is paltry compared with the extent of need. The US economy is worth $10 trillion; the US spends $400 billion every year on defence, but its aid budget is only 0.16 per cent. of GDP. It is the meanest of all the rich nations, but the Bush Administration are saying in effect that, for Africa, the US can afford an extra amount equal to only 0.08 per cent. of its annual defence budget. The Africa Commission states in its excellent report that that is just one ninth of the absolute minimum that is necessary. The trouble is that the US never took much interest in Africa—at least until the 1990s, when oil was discovered off the west coast.
	Quite rightly, much has been made of corrupt governance in Africa, and that dreadful problem needs to be tackled. It is used as an excuse to withhold aid, but helpful precedents have been agreed by NEPAD and some African Governments that would allow aid expenditure to be monitored and audited by independent agencies. That is a step forward. Moreover, the oil and mining industries that are notorious for bribing Government officials are now subject to transparency guidelines. Again, though, those guidelines must have force and they must be statutory.
	The corrupt Governments in Africa are bad, but they are not the only ones at fault. We must not be blind to the fact that western practices are also reprehensible in some respects. All too often, tied aid is used as a form of subsidy for commercial exports. In addition, the US in particular often directs aid as a means of helping military allies such as Israel, and not as a way of relieving poverty. The ActionAid report released last month stated that 40 per cent. of global aid goes on over-priced assistance from international consultants. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has challenged that, but the figure is certainly substantial. So when we hear members of the free-trade right scorn Africa's aid junkies, we must ask exactly who those aid junkies are, and who profits so handsomely from the global aid system.
	Considerable advances in aid and debt relief have been made in the run-up to the G8 meeting, but they pale into insignificance when compared with the fundamental goal—to transform the profoundly unjust and discriminatory international trading system that impoverished the developing countries in the first place. We have always demanded free trade from those countries, so that their markets could be opened up to our multinational corporations, but we do not always reciprocate. We do not practise unfettered free trade, as we limit access to our markets by means of quotas, high tariffs, so-called voluntary agreements and a host of other restrictions whenever our domestic industries come under pressure.
	If we are honest, we must admit that the west does not really believe in free trade. What we really believe in is safeguarding our economic dominance at all costs. Nearly all the aid, loan and debt-relief packages put together by the World Bank and the IMF are predicated on liberalisation conditionalities. Before they can receive aid, developing countries are required to agree to dismantle tariff barriers, open up to foreign investment, privatise state-owned companies, reduce public services and hold down wages.
	Now we are at it again. Paragraph 2 of the pre-G8 Finance Ministers' statement says that to qualify for debt relief developing countries must
	"boost private sector development"
	and eliminate
	"impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign."
	To take just one example among many, that means that Uganda will have to sell off its water supplies, its agricultural services and its commercial bank, all with minimum regulation.
	I do not especially like that policy, but if it worked, a good case could be made for it. But it does not work. According to the World Bank's figures, in its recent report, across the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, before it and the IMF started introducing strict conditions on countries that accepted their loans, median annual growth in developing countries was 2.5 per cent. a year. In the 18 years from 1980 to 1998, it was zero or 0.0 per cent. precisely. Trade is the best route out of poverty, as we can all agree, but not if it is fixed to keep developing countries in subjection as mere suppliers of commodities at rock-bottom prices with severely limited access to western markets. Yes, we should cancel the debt, but we should cancel it unconditionally. We also conveniently forget that all countries that have achieved economic take-off have done so behind high protective walls, and I hope that we will consider that for Africa, too.

Stephen O'Brien: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I am always pleased to follow the distinguished and right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher), with his long track record and undoubted concern on these issues. While he concluded on a more consensual note, a degree of anachronism crept into his arguments, because the whole point of the G8 and the Government's aims is that growth is not a zero sum game. The whole idea is that the growth of the rich countries can be spread through trade to help the growth of the developing nations and thus the world generally.
	I start by setting out my total agreement with the proposition that the Government have a real opportunity at the G8 to set the agenda and the tone for the two paramount issues of far-reaching concern—climate change and relieving poverty in Africa. Those are the correct priorities, and they are laudable and timely. The Government have my party's support for those overarching themes. This is an occasion on which it is wholly appropriate—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay) said—to say that the Secretary of State's speech was one of the best and most memorable that I have heard in this House, and I am grateful to him for it. Equally, I appreciated the response from my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell). There is a danger of the debate turning into a paean of praise, but the whole point is that we have a shared belief in the importance of the subject and in translating our will into effective action. That is the challenge for all of us in this debating Chamber as we discuss the deeply disturbing problems on the ground in Africa.
	Africa is a vast place and the topic is vast. I hope that the debate will bring out many aspects of the topic, but each one of us has to do our best to focus on the issues on which we can gain some purchase, instead of trying to cover the whole canvas. My own interest is well known, not least because I am Tanzanian born. I am chairman of the all-party group on that country, as well as the all-party malaria group. I am also involved with the all-party Africa group, whose chairman I see in his place, as well as being vice-chairman of the Uganda group and the debt, aid and trade group, which used to be the heavily indebted poor countries group and before that the Jubilee 2000 group—changes of name that demonstrate how these issues have developed over time.
	It is pleasing to note that Tanzania has seen a massive increase in the take-up of primary education, from 4 million to 7 million, to which the Secretary of State referred. Of course, as I was finding out in a conversation with the high commissioner of Tanzania to this country just the other day, the challenge is how to develop the secondary education system. By the time one gets any system in place for primary education, the cohort of children who benefit quickly become those who are challenged by the need to develop and consolidate the advantage, all of which has been hugely strengthened and assisted by the good will and financial aid from this country and many others. So that is now the challenge for Tanzania, as well as reaching out to the many rural areas where primary education has not even begun to become a reality.
	Although such things, as the Secretary of State said, are certainly examples of aid that works, we need to pause for a moment to wonder whether the phrase that he might have used in his speech is that aid can and often does work, but not always. It is important for the future that western donor countries and their people continue to have the confidence that aid is worth while and an essential thing for us to do. That has been touched on, and it is part of the Secretary of State's and the Government's priority. So when we focus on poverty, in addition to the cancellation of debt, the big challenge now involves multilateral debt, which is subject to much wider agreements and where a solution is more difficult to secure.
	Most of us feel that the progress made on private bank debt and bilateral debt through the Paris Club has been very significant and very helpful. However, we should bear in mind the words of Anthony Montague Brown—the former private secretary to Sir Winston Churchill—who, after Sir Winston Churchill died, went off into the City and the banks. In 1976 and 1977, he was instrumental in extending a lot of loans to developing countries. He said in his book that of course people never expected those loans to be repaid. When that is analysed, it is clear that those debts have long since been written off by those banks. The interest has long been way in excess of what was a sensible, commercial return. Let's face it. Many of those debts have in fact been cancelled—rightly—which shows the mental approach at the time.
	We should not forget that there comes a time—perhaps this helps the argument of the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher), who does not appear to be in his place at the moment— when we should think about cancelling, either without conditions or without too many conditions, the debts that are causing some of the continuing problems
	Apart from hoping that the Secretary of State will carefully consider the arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield about the advocacy fund—a topic and policy in which I was glad to be involved in a previous incarnation in the House—my primary argument is that we must consider what gains the best leverage for the aid that is being translated from this country to Africa.
	I am sure that many hon. Members are familiar with a very good body of work called the Copenhagen consensus, in which a rigorous assessment was undertaken of all the possible destinations for money in the developing countries and how best that can gain a purchase on the things that really matter when transforming those countries' structural inability to develop, so that they grow and gain the potential for economic independence. Such things were compared with many others that tended to be rather worthy.
	I am inevitably bound to mention malaria. Hon. Members will know that I have an obsession with the need to tackle malaria. Rather than going through the detail, I shall quote what the Copenhagen consensus suggested:
	"Many recommended malaria control interventions have a mean cost per Disability-Adjusted Life Year"—
	even talking in those terms shows the hard-nosed assessments that we have to make, which the Secretary of State has been trying to establish—
	"of less than . . . $50 a day and most of them less than . . . $25 which economists consider highly attractive in a very low-income country. As judged by the expert panel of Copenhagen Consensus, these are stunningly attractive investments. This panel of distinguished economists ranked controlling malaria as one of the top four global priorities that would yield the largest benefit/cost ratio."
	Given that one of the other factors was dealing with climate change from the western world, we need to consider carefully whether we should devote aid to things other than health and education, clean water and the controlling of infectious disease. They bring the greatest advantages. In addition, we should free the rules for trade and support good governance.
	How do we get the money past the tyrants to the poorest people? We face a difficult dichotomy. Where good governance exists, we should use it as a test and reward it with aid directed via Governments, through a liaison committee or non-governmental organisations. I used to think that aid should go directly to NGOs, but to reward good governance we have to go through the democratic processes so that democratically elected politicians gain some credit for what they have done. We should reward them "pour encourager les autres". Unfortunately, of course, les autres are often tyrants who do not allow people in the poorest countries to know about good governance. That is both a challenge and a dichotomy.
	As there is a restriction on the overall package, we should use the money to best leverage effect and reward those who have shown good governance. It will increase the confidence of the west in continuing and sustaining that money if we ask for it to be directed where we would gain most leverage.
	The Copenhagen consensus made it clear, through a rigorous test, that controlling infectious disease was cost-effective. HIV/AIDS and TB unquestionably belong in that category. So, too, does malaria, which is hollowing out the generation of children that replaced those killed by HIV/AIDS.
	We must concentrate on training people to deliver health care. Malaria is treatable and curable. The all-party group on malaria recently produced a persuasive report and I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for attending its launch. We can all collectively be proud and confident that, rather than just being worthy, we are making a huge and effective difference to the future of Africa and its peoples.

Ann McKechin: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien), who made a thoughtful speech.
	Our debate will rightly concentrate on the statistical evidence of the need to address Africa's poverty, to release its potential to grow and flourish, but as the Commission for Africa report correctly states:
	"We have to remember that behind each statistic lies a child who is precious and loved. Every day that child, and thousands like her, struggle for breath—and for life—and tragically and painfully lose that fight."
	I have had the opportunity to visit Africa only since I was elected, and I have witnessed the outstanding beauty of the continent and the warmth of its people, but I recognise the scale of the challenge that they face and their overwhelming desire for a better future. I am sure that the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) will remember our visit to Rwanda. I shall never forget the scenes at the genocide site and the gacaca trial that we attended.
	Last September, I visited Zambia on a British Council parliamentary exchange and followed the hon. Regina Musokotwane around her constituency in the rural south. We visited two schools. One had been opened by the state government, after the local community had waited almost 30 years; the other was built by local people themselves with supplies from a US charity. They had no money for a qualified teacher. They had no power or even a water borehole, and the school could offer only a basic syllabus for the first two years of primary education. The people were incredibly proud of their achievement—rightly so; but at the same time as my visit, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were insisting on a nil budget deficit to enable the Zambian Government to reach the heavily indebted poor countries completion point. As a result, 5,000 qualified teachers had no job and the World Bank representative in Zambia was informing politicians that they should stop criticising his institution.
	As the commission's report points out, debt relief is key to achieving the millennium development goals not only for the current HIPC group, but also for many other nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Was the meeting of G7 Ministers earlier this month what the Chancellor described as "a historic breakthrough" on the issue of debt? On certain key criteria, we can definitely say yes, but with the caveat that the fight to establish fully adequate debt relief has still some way to go.
	I am chair of the all-party group on debt, aid and trade—formerly the all-party group on HIPC—and our group has long argued the justice of granting 100 per cent. debt relief to the world's poorest nations. I pay tribute to my predecessor as chair of the group, Julia Drown, the former Member for Swindon, South, for her marvellous work in pursuing that campaign. The decision taken at the meeting to grant 100 per cent. debt relief not only on the interest, but on the debt stock, for the world's 18 poorest countries, with another nine to be added in the next couple of years, was welcome.
	The US Administration changed stance by agreeing to include International Monetary Fund debt as well as World Bank debt in the deal. That is significant because IMF debt is extremely onerous and constitutes half of all debt service obligations to the main multilateral institutions. The agreement to replenish the funds of the international financial institutions rather than reducing the amount available for grants was also significant. That news, when added to the recent announcement by EU states that they will effectively double their aid to Africa over the next five years and set a timetable to reach the target of 0.7 per cent, is a leap forward. I am sure that the private Member's Bill being promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke), who is not in the Chamber, will help us to ensure that we reach that target.
	This in itself is not however sufficient to allow Africa to meet its millennium development goals. Let us not forget that that was what the international community solemnly promised to achieve more than five years ago. We must go a great deal further and acknowledge now that such additional effort is achievable, rather than a pipe dream. Just last year, the international community cancelled $30 billion of debt owed by Iraq, which is more than has been delivered to the entire African continent over the past 10 years.
	Even at this late stage, the G8 summit should next week consider extending the remit of the G7 debt proposal. The original HIPC list was drawn up in 1996 on a rather flimsy analytical basis and excluded key states such as Kenya and Angola. Kenya's total debt is $5.5 billion and 70 million Kenyans live on less than $1 a day, yet the World Bank considers its debt to be sustainable, despite the fact that 32 per cent. of its national budget is spent on servicing the debt, which is more than the amount spent on health and education combined. According to a debt sustainability analysis by the Jubilee debt campaign, Kenya needs total debt cancellation if it is ever to realise its millennium development goals. Some Kenyan politicians have suggested that the country is being penalised for keeping up debt payments. Debt relief seems to remain as elusive as ever for such nations.
	It has been calculated that 35 non-HIPC, low-income countries warrant immediate 100 per cent. debt cancellation just so they can have a chance of meeting their millennium goals. To be fair, the UK Government have recognised that fact by agreeing to write off their share of multilateral debt for the world's poorest nations.
	This month's agreement cancels only 10 per cent. of the debt owed by all 62 states with the lowest incomes which need 100 per cent. cancellation. The deal will amount to $1 billion per year for the next 40 years. That is $40 billion in nominal terms, but it is perhaps more accurately described as a net present value of $17 billion.
	I know that the US Administration was reluctant to accept the sale of IMF gold reserves to fund debt relief and that an alternative decision was reached, but given that we in the UK accept the case for using the IMF's vast undervalued gold resources for the further extension of relief, will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State continue pressing the point in the international community that we should give more relief and that we have a method of expanding debt relief? The undervaluation is estimated at $35 billion, so surely it is unreasonable to offer the people of Africa less relief from odious debt than what is offered to the current Iraqi Administration.
	I welcomed the deal on Nigeria that was reached this week at the Paris Club. Will my right hon. Friend indicate the total amount of relief that will be granted to Nigeria as a result of the initiative?
	I turn quickly to the conditionality that surrounds debt relief. Although I fully accept that we must show that relief is genuinely used properly and specifically for poverty eradication, I argue that multilateral institutions must accept responsibility for the many mistakes that they have made in the past by imposing inappropriate economic policies that were not focused on poverty reduction. I welcome the paper by the Department for International Development and the Treasury on conditionality, which acknowledges that fundamental changes must be made.
	I am worried that those states that have still to reach the HIPC process—there are a number of them—could find themselves in exactly the same position as Zambia last year by spending all their energies on achieving nil budget deficits, rather than employing teachers, who are vital in the fight against poverty. The statement of the G7 Finance Ministers makes no concession on that. Instead, it ambiguously refers to good governance, accountability and transparency as crucial to releasing the benefits of debt cancellation. That appears to be a further test applied to low-income states on top of the already demanding requirements of the HIPC process.
	It has been difficult to draw the boundaries between good governance conditions and economic policy conditions, with policy reforms, such as privatisation, sometimes promoted on an anti-corruption basis. Of course, there should be accountability, but as the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) said, if we truly wish to foster good governance and democracy in a genuinely equal partnership with African Governments, we have to allow them and their citizens to make their own economic decisions and to take responsibility. Will the Minister assure me that the Government will press for further relief not to be subject to economically damaging conditionalities?
	I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department for International Development on their enormous efforts over the past few months to place Africa at the top of the G8 agenda next week. That is proper and fit. To use a cliché, we are going forward and not back, but we need to maintain that effort so that Africa achieves its full potential, which is what we all desire. I hope that the Minister uses his good efforts to persuade the G8 to go even further next week.

Tony Baldry: The hon. Member for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin) made an excellent speech, which included some powerful points. She demonstrated that the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) was wrong to dislike consensus. If hon. Members speak with a united voice, our message is that much clearer to the rest of the world. There are others whom we have to convince, not least Congress in the United States and colleagues in other legislative Assemblies, that what we want to do, and what we are promoting, is correct and that our policies are right. The House speaking with one voice is powerful.
	I want to comment on climate change, conflict, capacity, commerce and commitment. On climate change, we have to recognise that what is happening at Gleneagles is not two separate debates on climate change and Africa, because they relate to each other. Climate change is important for Africa and developing countries. If I had one sadness in the last Parliament, it was that the International Development Committee's report on climate change and sustainable development did not get the coverage it deserved. I commend it to hon. Members.
	Vulnerable communities will suffer from climate change most. It also contributes to conflict. One reason why we have problems in Darfur is that the Sahel desert is moving south and there is more desertification. Pastoralists who used to move their cattle around over the grass are finding it more difficult to find grazing land. They, in turn, put pressure on farmers, which led to conflict. That is all about climate change. Getting both things right is important. I hope that the G8 tackles Africa and climate change.
	On conflict, the Secretary of State was right when he talked about peer review mechanisms and what is happening in Ghana and elsewhere, and with NEPAD. That is brilliant. However, there is no peer group pressure in Africa on conflict. There is no excuse for what is happening in Zimbabwe. There is also no excuse for neighbouring countries not exerting peer group pressure on Mugabe.
	These debates are brilliant, but we tend to have two lots of debates. We have international development debates and we have foreign affairs debates, and the two never come together. It would be wonderful if both Secretaries of State were present or we at least had a Minister from the other Department to wind up the debate. The issues all interrelate. I suspect one reason why we do not have the sort of peer group pressure that we should have on Zimbabwe is that the South Africans are concerned about the collapse of Zimbabwe and what that would mean in terms of refugees coming across into their country. There is still no excuse for the lack of pressure, however.
	There is no excuse for Nigeria not to hand over Charles Taylor to stand trial in the war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone. We understand that it got him out of Liberia and provided him with asylum, but that was a long time ago. A UN-backed warrant has been issued for Taylor to stand trial before a UN-backed court. He should stand trial, and if he does not, I hope that the UN war crimes tribunal will find a way of trying him in absentia. Such trials happened at Nuremburg; I see no reason why they should not happen in Freetown.
	On conflict, we do not seem to have a coherent strategy on military or other intervention for the purposes of humanitarian relief. Everything is done on an ad hoc basis: the French went into Cote d'Ivoire; we went into Sierra Leone. We have a different mechanism now for Darfur. The African Union is fine; those of us who have seen its work were very impressed, but we are never quite sure how it is going to be funded. Different Secretaries of State come to the Dispatch Box at different times and say that it will be funded by NATO or the European Union, or perhaps by a bit of money from the United Nations. There is absolutely no coherence on this issue. If we have another humanitarian crisis in Africa, who will take the lead? On what basis? According to what ground rules? There is also no excuse for Ethiopia not acknowledging the international arbitration over Ethiopia and Eritrea. In all these situations, there are some things that Africa has to do and others that we have to do. We need much greater coherence in regard to the way in which the international community intervenes.
	The Commission for Africa's report clearly states that capacity is the most important factor. One of the things that strikes us when we visit Departments and Ministries in Africa is how thin the capacity is. The report makes it clear that it is important that more be done to train civil servants, and to develop higher and further education and skills in Africa. About three quarters of those who leave Africa to pursue higher education never return. What has happened to higher education in Africa over the past couple of decades has been a tragedy, and it is now in need of considerable investment. We also need to help parliamentarians in Africa, as we have said on many occasions. We have organisations such as the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and they should do more to support parliamentarians in Africa, to enable them to understand what is involved in holding Governments to account.
	On commerce, the figures show that Africa's economies need to grow by 7 per cent. a year if there is to be any hope of meeting the millennium development goals, yet many are growing by no more than 1 per cent. a year. The vice-president of Sierra Leone was speaking today at Chatham House about how his country was going to go forward, but very little is happening there. It would be very difficult for its economy to grow by more than 1 per cent. a year at the moment. During the last Parliament, the International Development Committee went to South Africa. The unemployment rate in many of the townships there was between 60 and 70 per cent.
	We all talk about health, education and AIDS in Africa, but an issue that we must all address is that of enterprise. Where are the new jobs going to come from? We saw Lesotho get a toe-hold in the textile industry for a while, only to get completely knocked off course by what is happening in China. Of course, what happens at the WTO talks in Hong Kong later this year will be very important, but south-south trade is also important, and there is a great deal of trade that does not involve the reform of the WTO rules. It is difficult to see how even a country as influential as South Africa can be sustainable in the long term if it continues to have to support unemployment rates of 60 or 70 per cent. We need to pay a lot more attention to commerce.
	On commitment, some people believe that if we manage to achieve what the Prime Minister and the Chancellor hope to achieve at Gleneagles, we shall be able simply to tick that box. However, this is a really long-haul issue. We are miles behind on the millennium development goals. What leaves the greatest impression on my mind when I visit Africa is the persistent, grinding, unremitting poverty that so many people have to endure. We must tackle that problem, but it will not be done in a matter of weeks or months; it will require a long-term commitment by all of us in the House over many years. It is brilliant that there is now broad cross-party agreement on that, because Governments—irrespective of their political persuasion—will need to maintain that commitment over the next five, 10 or 15 years. We have a simple choice as a civilisation—either we get this right and meet the millennium development goals or we just turn our back on Africa and shut the door. From some articles and reports in the press it is clear that some people are urging us to do the latter. They do not see the point of investing in Africa or of caring about it. We care about Africans, because they are fellow human beings, and are as valuable, valid and important as any other individual. Our commitment must therefore be long term. The fact that in the past few years these issue have risen up the political agenda in the House and the fact that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are making a political commitment are to be greatly applauded. Everyone in the House hopes that they will succeed at the G8 conference and that we can take a definite step forward to ensure that we meet the millennium development goals by 2015.

John McFall: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I pay tribute to the sterling work that the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) has done as Chairman of the International Development Committee. We are all grateful for his chairmanship of that Committee in the last Parliament. I congratulate the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) on his maiden speech and, as has been said, his contribution over a period of many years to the Northern Ireland peace process. It has been lonely and rocky, but it needed courage, which he has shown in abundance. I welcome him to the House and wish him well in his endeavours both as leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party and as a Member of Parliament.
	I congratulate the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for International Development on the agreement that they secured from the G8 Finance Ministers. The fact that all multilateral debts and some bilateral debts have been written off is a huge step forward. Congratulations should also go to ordinary people. For many years, my constituents, as well as churches and voluntary organisations in my constituency have worked with me on the Jubilee 2000 campaign and other initiatives. More than 3,000 of my constituents signed up to those campaigns, so there is enormous enthusiasm locally. Many events have taken place in my local schools over the years. More than a year ago, on my return from a visit to Zambia, we organised a Christmas response to the problems there. Almost £18,000 was generated by the local community, including primary schools. St. Michael's primary school in my constituency, for example, contributed £1,500. Christie Park school mounted a spontaneous concert and gathered £200 from parents as they came to collect their children from school. Secondary schools, including the Vale of Leven academy, Dumbarton academy and, in particular, Our Lady and St. Patrick's high school have a taken lifelong interest in the subject.
	Eammon Cullen is one of the teaching colleagues with whom I used to work. He teaches at Our Lady and St. Patrick's, where he organised a justice and peace group. It has been in existence for more than 20 years, so the young people in my constituency can say that they worked on these initiatives before we did. I pay tribute to Eammon and his colleagues. He is about to retire after 30 years' teaching service in Our Lady and St. Patrick's school, but his interest will not decline and he will work with renewed vigour on justice and peace and other issues that are vital to the Gleneagles summit. Without that groundswell of support, the Government and the G8 would not be where they are. May I therefore suggest to the Minister that, given the enthusiasm of young people in my constituency and elsewhere, he and the Secretary of State should devise an initiative to engage them? They could provide finance and opportunities for them to engage with a particular country in Africa and thus achieve a constituency focus on the subject. The only way we will take the goals forward is by passing the task from generation to generation. Given the good work that young people have undertaken to date, I would like the Government to respond with an initiative such as I have suggested.
	We have a once in a lifetime opportunity, as has been said. The UK is hosting the G8 summit, the UK holds the EU presidency, the UN summit on the millennium development goals is taking place later in the year, and the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting will be held in Hong Kong in December. To date we have failed miserably on the millennium development goals. The rich nations pledged that there would be primary education for all in the developing countries by 2015, but present estimates indicate that it will not be universally available until 2130—115 years late. The rich nations pledged to halve poverty by 2015, but that will not be achieved until 2150—135 years late. The rich nations pledged to eliminate avoidable infant deaths, but that will not be achieved until 2165—150 years late.
	If a citizen of one of the developing countries asked whether there was any justice in the world, the answer would manifestly be no. Does that make the task impossible for us? Certainly not. There needs to be a much more urgent focus on the three intertwining strands of aid, trade and debt. We have heard today about aid to Africa. From 1981 to 2001 the number of poor people in Africa doubled from 164 million to 313 million. That level of deprivation is unconscionable. It is accompanied by disease, conflict and squalor.
	The injustice in global trade has been mentioned. The rich countries' massive support and protection for their own agriculture is paradoxical, since agriculture is the sector with the greatest potential in Africa to decrease poverty and achieve the pro-poor engagement that is so crucial, particularly to rural Africa. On debt, notwithstanding the agreement that has been made—we do not yet know the details—Africa still owes almost $300 billion and pays off $15 billion a year in interest and fees. Only seven states out of the 53 in the African Union have seen their debts reduced to sustainable levels.
	I mentioned Zambia. I have had a number of contacts with civic society in Lusaka, having visited on a few occasions and having welcomed representatives of that society in the United Kingdom. One of my friends, Peter Henriot, runs the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Lusaka. Peter and his group undertook an economic, social and cultural rights survey in March this year. One of the issues on which they focused for countries like ours was employment. At present 90 per cent. of Zambians are unemployed or work in precarious conditions in the informal sector. They are hampered by inadequate skills, inadequate capital and inadequate support for infrastructure. When we discuss aid, it is important to focus on transport and other aspects to ensure that people in rural areas can be involved in and welcomed into the country's economic development.
	Despite the fact that the Zambian Government provide free primary education, education is gradually becoming the privilege of the very few. Tuition fees in colleges and in the two universities in Zambia range between US$60 a year and US$1,600, which is beyond the reach of the vast majority of Zambians. On public health, my colleagues tell me that only 15 per cent. of houses have access to proper toilet facilities. The 2000 census on population and housing indicates that although 49 per cent. have access to safe water, 51 per cent. do not. The lack of access to clean water and sanitation presents a huge risk to public health in that country. The statistics are dismal, but they remind us of our task.
	Mention has been made of the economic and social progress that our country had to make, so let us compare our country with Zambia. In the UK, the death rate per 1,000 population is 10.8, whereas it is 20.23 in Zambia, which is double the UK rate. In the UK, infant mortality is 5.16 per 1,000 live births, whereas it is 112 in Zambia. In the UK, life expectancy is 78.5 years, whereas it is 37 years in Zambia, where 23 per cent. of under-fives are underweight, too.
	The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) asked, "Why has Africa gone backwards?" Africa has gone backwards since the 1960s. Living standards and growth levels in Africa in the 1960s were greater than they were in the 1990s, but does that mean that we should halt our support—

Gordon Banks: In approaching this debate, I am reminded of the defining statement of the Labour party, produced on the back of each membership card:
	"by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone".
	Through that statement of principle and notion of solidarity, I hope that our fellow parliamentarians and legislators around the world, and our fellow people around the world, come together sincerely to address the huge injustice that exists in Africa.
	Levels of poverty in Africa are beyond that which many of us in the Chamber can comprehend. Despite the images on our television screens, and the reports from Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and other nations, we cannot truly comprehend what it must be like to live on £1 a week or a small portion of rice a day, or to walk miles just to collect a small amount of water. Our life of relative luxury does not come close to the endless hardships faced by the people of Africa. By the strength of our common endeavour, however, we have already begun to achieve something.
	In Uganda, debt relief of £700 million in 2000 helped to increase its poverty reduction budget by 75 per cent. Since then, Uganda has abolished health user fees, and attendance in clinics has risen by a staggering 87 per cent. In Rwanda, the revenue authority has increased revenue by 40 per cent. over two years, allowing the Government to double spending on health and education and improving the lives of many Rwandans, both young and old. Possibly more importantly, we have written off 100 per cent. of the debt owed by the poorest countries to the UK.
	We cannot become complacent, however. We cannot stop working towards a greater good for the continent of Africa. In a week's time, the leaders of the world's eight richest nations will meet at the Gleneagles hotel in my constituency. This will be a real chance to increase the speed at which change is brought about and to give back to Africa some of what was taken from it during the years of imperial rule.
	Debt relief is a vital part of the relief of poverty in Africa. Nations can spend a lifetime simply paying back the interest on their debts. All too often, the moneys involved are small for western nations but huge for the African nations, where the debts hang round countries' necks, prohibiting their development and progress.
	This Labour Government's commitment to debt relief has led the way for other nations. The Prime Minister, with the Secretary of State for International Development and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has constantly maintained the pressure on other nations to join our campaign to eradicate poverty. We now see the beginnings of the international finance facility, pledges to ensure that Government spending on aid reaches 0.7 per cent. of GDP, and a dedication to wipe out the debts of those nations so that they can begin to lift their citizens out of poverty.
	However, debt relief must be coupled with governance changes in those countries. Democracy needs to be strengthened, and corruption stemmed. We must provide the necessary assistance to individual African nations to help them to diversify and stimulate internal and external economic relationships, and to become more fiscally understanding of the needs of good governance.
	We cannot simply write off debt in the hope that countries that have been ravaged by dictatorship, military rule and war will bloom into model nation states. Corruption is a huge problem, and improvements must be made to ensure that the assistance reaches the people whom it is meant to reach. We cannot assume that individual nations can always make those changes on their own. We must provide them with the help that they need to take those steps, so as to guarantee that the debt relief that this Government and many others have fought to secure can be effectively managed.
	Addressing debt relief and governance will not solve all Africa's problems, however. There were 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa in 2003, with 5 million new infections in that year alone. HIV/AIDS directly or indirectly affects nearly everyone in Africa. Hundreds of thousands of children are left orphaned by parents who have contracted the disease, and the stigma attached to the illness breaks up communities. The cost of drugs that help fight the infection make those who suffer even poorer.
	The IFF will allow us to build the health care systems that those countries need to combat HIV/AIDS, and to implement a plan for prevention and care—and, I hope, one day a cure. Nelson Mandela said that AIDS is a curse that we must not deny, and better education in countries such as South Africa can help to set the world on the right track in combating HIV/AIDS. Campaigns waged by religious groups encouraging young people not to use condoms must be addressed, and the denial of assistance by foreign governments to organisations that provide condoms as a method of HIV/AIDS prevention should also be corrected. Religious beliefs should not be ignored, but neither should the devastating consequences of such misdirected advice.
	The cost of AIDS drugs to many in Africa is phenomenal. All too often, western companies charge more per dose in developing nations than in their home nations. I cannot place a price on the cost of a human life—but it appears that many pharmaceutical companies can. I see companies with soaring profits that publish catalogues of their compassion in helping developing nations, but still charge just enough for HIV/AIDS treatment to ensure that their shareholders dividends are kept high. They give with one hand and take away with the other.
	The IFF advance purchase scheme could prevent more than 1 million deaths a year. The work by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation and the generosity of the Gates Foundation have helped to secure vaccinations for 50 million children around the world. I am proud to see the £1 billion pledged by this Government to the finance facility for immunisation. That is a real start to addressing the plague of diseases that blight so many countries in Africa, and attention must now be drawn to how we can tackle the damage done by malaria.
	Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell's comment that the west is increasingly developing rampant consumerism and a "must have" culture, leading us to huge waste, is correct. Consumerism and the protectionism that is so closely associated with it hold back nations that are struggling to develop. As the Chancellor said yesterday in his speech to UNICEF, we should be opening our markets and removing trade-distorting subsidies. We must more urgently tackle the waste caused by the common agricultural policy by setting a date for the end of export subsidies.
	I am confident that through our presidency of the European Union we shall be able to begin to address the issues of agricultural subsidies, and help to combat trade issues which mean that it is cheaper to import rice from America to southern Senegal than to grow it and transport it from the north of Senegal to the south. Big business should not profit from the expense of people and the environment. Greater corporate responsibility must go hand in hand with freer trade. We must end the export dumping that damages the livelihoods of the poorest communities in Africa. We must fight corruption, work to improve the health and education of millions of people in Africa, implement debt relief programmes and investment, and open the markets to provide a truly free-trade environment.
	The fruits of this Labour Government's leadership in regard to poverty in Africa are already beginning to show. Even President Bush's comments yesterday reflect the willingness of other nations to listen to my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for International Development. However, I urge those who will attend the G8 summit at Gleneagles next week not to let this opportunity pass. We have been here before. We have seen discussions take place on the need to address poverty and debt relief in which much has been promised and little delivered. I hope that the actions of my right hon. and hon. Friends at DFID in recent years have shown that this time it is different, and we will deliver. I fear, though, that a watered-down result from next week's discussions may harm future attempts to address global poverty, despite the advances that we may make at Gleneagles.

John Barrett: It is a great pleasure to follow two Members—the hon. Members for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks)—who represent different parts of Perthshire, where the G8 summit will be held. Apart from the summit, we shall have the Make Poverty History march, which will take place in my own city of Edinburgh, the Live8 concert, which will be attended by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, and the descent of the potential million forecast by Bob Geldof on the city during the following week.
	The summit may constitute one of the most significant meetings ever to take place in Scotland. The decisions and agreements made there will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the future of not just Africa but the entire planet. The G8 nations account for 65 per cent. of global GDP and 47 per cent. of global carbon dioxide emissions. With climate change and Africa dominating next week's G8 agenda, it is no exaggeration to say that those countries, acting together, could make an enormous difference on both issues.
	As the Prime Minister said several years ago, Africa remains a scar on the conscience of the world. Despite all the words and all the promises, the scar is far from being healed. For too many years, political leaders have sat on their hands making grand gestures when real action has been required. The G8 summit marks a unique opportunity for the UK to lead the way and broker an agreement to help Africa lift itself out of the extreme poverty that it is experiencing. It is an opportunity that we cannot afford to squander.
	It is important to pay tribute to the work of the Make Poverty History campaign, which has been extraordinarily successful in bringing this issue to the forefront of debate in the House and throughout the country. For many years, I have witnessed at first hand in Africa the terrible effect of poverty and also the real potential for the future. Allowing Africa to take control of that future requires meaningful action on our part in three fundamentally important areas: aid, debt and trade.
	We must be committed to the principle of fair trade, not just free trade. We must drop the remaining debts that continue to cripple so many African countries, and we need all the G8 countries to make real strides towards meeting the requirements on international aid to achieve the millennium development goals. At the same time, it is crucial that we continue to tackle corruption, and support and encourage the transition to stable democracy throughout Africa.
	It is clear that poverty in Africa cannot be eradicated without a major increase in international aid. The millennium development goals require that all countries work toward providing 0.7 per cent. of their national income in aid. The target is both realistic and achievable, but currently only five of the 22 major donors have met it. The UK Government have done well finally to establish a timetable for reaching the target, but 11 donors still have no timetable and many appear to be in no hurry. If current trends continue, Canada will not reach the target until 2025 and Germany will not do so before 2087.
	What is more, the sums that rich countries currently invest in tackling global poverty remain embarrassingly small. Even worse, the wealthier that these countries have become, the less they have given. The sad truth is that today, the world's richest countries give half as much, as a proportion of their income, as they did in the 1960s. The Government of the USA, the richest country in the world, spend just 0.1 per cent. of gross domestic product on aid, yet the same Government are able to find twice as much to spend on the war in Iraq as they would need to spend to increase their aid budget to 0.7 per cent. of GDP. I very much hope that the G8 summit will provide the Prime Minister with the opportunity to show the benefits of his special relationship with George Bush by his persuading the USA to commit to those increases.
	On top of this, too often the aid and assistance that we have given has been unhelpfully politicised. In recent years, the very goals of development aid have been redefined to suit the new security agenda. For example, in Denmark, Japan and Australia, combating terrorism is now an explicit aim of official aid programmes. It is a question of priorities, and I am afraid that ending poverty in Africa is simply not at the top of that list. In recent years, it has not even been close.
	It is clear that poverty in Africa will not be solved by simply throwing money at it. Without a wide-ranging change in how aid is delivered, it will not achieve maximum benefit. Aid needs to focus better on the needs of the poorest, which means more being spent on basic health care and education, for example. Aid should no longer be conditional on recipients promising economic changes such as privatisation or deregulation of services, and the interests of the donor country certainly should not be put above those of the recipient. Currently, almost 30 per cent. of G7 aid is tied to an obligation to buy goods and services from the donor country. That is a truly shameful statistic.
	It is worth noting that many countries that we now consider "developed" would not enjoy their current economic status but for their having received substantial amounts of aid. Lest we forget, after the second world war, 16 western European nations—ourselves included—benefited from grants from the USA worth more than $75 billion in today's terms. Those grants underpinned our economic recovery and have helped to create today's climate of peace and prosperity. More recently, EU structural funds have supported growth in Spain and in other southern European countries. Yet even though it has been proven that aid can work effectively, African countries have not yet benefited from the same generosity.
	I will not say much on debt, given the Chancellor's recent announcements about increasing the number of countries to be freed from debt, which were welcome. I hope that they will be followed by the announcement of more initiatives in the week ahead. But even if African countries are freed from debt, their situation can only improve with a change in the way that we trade with them. By developing a genuinely liberal and international trade policy, we can enable major opportunities for growth and development in the parts of the world that need it most. Currently, the rules of international trade remain stacked in the favour of the richest and most powerful countries. Opening European markets to the products of the poorest countries would help their economies, and stopping the dumping of subsidised EU food in Africa would help African farmers to become more self-sufficient. These basic acts could do more than aid could possibly hope to achieve. An increase in Africa's share of world exports of just 1 per cent. would be enough to raise the equivalent of more than five times the total amount of aid given to that region.
	We are part of the solution, but we are also part of the problem. A timely report published last week by Oxfam and Amnesty International highlighted the extent to which the UK and other G8 countries are exporting arms to many African countries, fuelling poverty, oppression and human rights abuses. The report pointed out that Britain, France and the US have made more money in the past four years from arms exports to Asia, Africa, the middle east and South America than they have offered to those regions in humanitarian aid. This report comes at just the right time to remind us of our role in Africa's plight. Rather than just being spectators to a crisis, in many instances we are playing a leading role.
	Poverty in Africa has been created and sustained not merely by chance or nature, but by a combination of factors—injustice in global trade, the huge burden of debt, insufficient and ineffective aid and global warming. They all play their part and each of those factors is determined by human decisions, yet we continue to condemn Africa to a future of poverty through our consistent failure to act on those issues.
	We are partly responsible for the continuing plight of much of Africa and we must start living up to that responsibility. We need to recognise that we have a responsibility and a moral obligation to act. A good test of the humanity of a society is how it treats the least privileged—and many of them live in Africa. The eyes of the world are on the G8 next week. We must all ensure that, after everyone has gone home, the momentum is maintained.
	We could do worse than follow the example of one of my own constituents, John Mackay, who has launched an organisation called Sailing for Justice. Included in that organisation's project is a non-stop circumnavigation of the world, starting and ending in Scotland and taking the Make Poverty History message around the globe. Through this year and the next, we in the House must, like my constituent, continue our commitment for as long as it takes to make poverty history.

Chris McCafferty: I begin by acknowledging the immense progress made on debt relief and poverty eradication through the leadership shown by the Secretary of State for International Development and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in developing pro-poor polices, which can only benefit all developing countries, and particularly the poorest countries in Africa.
	I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House would agree that among the major causes of poverty in Africa are poor maternal and child heath, the status of women and HIV/AIDS. I believe that major and sustained interventions in sexual and reproductive health are vital for the future of Africa and are the key to sustainable development there.
	Sub-Saharan Africa is the world's poorest place, with 70 per cent. of its people living on less than $2 a day. Fertility is highest in the poorest countries as well as among the poorest people in those societies. It should be no surprise that those same places have the highest levels of unmet need for family planning and reproductive health services. According to the environmental sustainability taskforce, that need, together with health, education and gender equality issues, must be addressed with policies and programmes that will slow population growth and realise synergistic improvements. At a national level, fertility reduction may enable accelerated social and economic development. Conversely, the absence of sexual and reproductive health and rights undermines development.
	It is widely recognised that reproductive illness and unintended pregnancies detract from economic development, whether by weakening or killing adults, disrupting and cutting short the lives of their children or placing heavy financial burdens on their families. Sexual and reproductive health and rights also deals with poverty and development in the wider context. The ability to exercise rights and freedoms of choice brings self-determination, which, in turn, has a direct impact on individuals' ability to emerge from poverty.
	Sub-Saharan Africa is confronted by continuing high population growth, youthful populations, low contraceptive prevalence, the highest rates of HIV/AIDs and high unmet need for family planning. Poor reproductive health accounts for 40 per cent. of the diseases suffered by women and one in 20 women in Africa die from pregnancy-related causes, in comparison with one in 16 in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, if all the available condoms in Africa were evenly distributed, each man would receive only three or four per year. There is a huge gap between the demand for condoms and the funding available for them.
	Of the world's 875 million illiterate adults, two thirds are women. Gender equality is a catalyst for development because women who can plan the timing of their pregnancies and the number of children that they have have greater opportunities for work and education. Empowering people to exercise their rights over fertility and to choose the number and spacing of their children is a very powerful tool in the fight to reduce poverty.
	Gender equality is essential for achieving the millennium development goals. It cannot be achieved without guaranteeing the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls.
	Seven priorities for action have been identified by the gender and education taskforce in order to achieve gender equality. One of them is ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. Specific interventions to address gender inequality should be an intrinsic part of all MDG-based investment packages. There should also be systematic challenges, such as the protection of sexual and reproductive health and rights, including access to information and family planning services.
	One African in two is under the age of 20. More than 40 million of Africa's children are not in school, and two thirds of them are girls. Families with fewer children spaced further apart can invest more in each child's education. That, of course, is of particular benefit to girls, as a girl's education may have a significantly lower priority than the education of a boy child in the family.
	Children in large families are likely to have reduced health care, and unwanted children are much more likely to die than wanted ones. Our mission in relation to child mortality is clear. Where mothers live, their children are much more likely to live. Where mothers are healthy, their children have a much better chance of being, and staying, healthy.
	There are 529,000 maternal deaths each year, and half of them are in Africa. Every day, 1,400 women die from preventable pregnancy-related causes. The child health and maternal health taskforce recommends that an additional target be included for monitoring the fifth of the millennium development goals, which is to achieve universal access to reproductive health service by 2015, through the primary health care system, and to ensure the same rate of progress, or faster, among the poor and other marginalised groups.
	More than 17 million Africans have died from AIDS, and another 25 million are infected with the HIV virus. Approximately 1.9 million of those are children. UNAIDS estimates that, this year alone, another 3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa will be infected with HIV.
	Our approach to HIV/AIDS should be based on an integrated model of sexual and reproductive health care. The Millennium Project's HIV taskforce stated:
	"The fight against HIV/AIDS and the broader struggle for reproductive health should be mutually reinforcing."
	National Governments should incorporate universal access to reproductive health and sexual health services and information as an integral part of their AIDS responses.
	I am sure hon. Members of all parties would agree that the empowerment of women is a development end in itself. Removing the obstacles to women's exercise of economic and, indeed, political power is also one of the most important ways to end poverty. Reproductive health is a part of an essential package of health care and education. It is a means to the goal of women's empowerment, but it is also a human right. It includes the right to choose the size and spacing of the family. It is by far the easiest and most cost-effective way to help people of all nations out of poverty, and it is essential to ensuring that the millennium development goals are achieved.
	It has been said twice already in the debate that we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at the G8 and the summit on the millennium development goals. I know that the Government believe that better reproductive health is crucial to reducing poverty in Africa and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to tell the House in his response to the debate that the Government will push reproductive health and rights in discussions at the G8 and push for their inclusion at the millennium development goals summit in September.

James Duddridge: If the good people of Rochford and Southend, East had not elected me to this place, I would be returning to Africa. I want to talk a little about my experiences of business in Africa, because I believe that business and free trade are more likely to alleviate poverty than any other activity.
	In the early 1990s, I was working in the City of London, and I told my employers at my annual appraisal that I was bored. They said, "Well, why don't you take this job in Swaziland?" I did not really know the continent, and certainly did not know where Swaziland was, but I took up that opportunity. Initially, I felt guilty sat behind a desk, because in my mind, at that time, compassionate people in Africa were aid workers, who dug ditches and, in many ways, lived in poverty themselves. Now, however, I know that Africa needs business men and bankers, specialists, financial markets and advisers. A colleague of mine who went out to Africa a few years before me set up a local stock exchange in Botswana, and went on to generate an awful lot of wealth for that country.
	As a banker I was called many things, and I am sure that I shall be called worse things as a politician—but at the bank I saw that although many people look on bankers in a negative way, we lubricated the economy, allowing speedier development and, ultimately, less poverty. I went on to work in the Ivory Coast for a Belgian bank, and in Botswana for a British bank. Indeed, I met my wife in Swaziland.
	In my experience, we need free trade and free elections—in that order. However, the term "fair trade" concerns me. It highlights inequalities in trade, and it is right to do so, but Governments should not decide what is fair, markets should—and the African marketplace is no different from any other.
	I have a number of clients involved with the sugar industry, and I have visited sugar factories in communities across Swaziland and Uganda. The factories tend to be in remote locations; the lucky ones get jobs there, but there is certainly a lot of poverty, particularly with seasonal workers. It makes me feel sick to think of the subsidies that the first world gives out within the sugar industry. It is duplicitous to take with one hand and give with the other, and then ask for praise for doing that. The sooner we abandon the common agricultural policy and have genuinely free trade among nation states, the better.
	I also want to mention some concerns about some of the charitable works carried out for Africa's benefit in the United Kingdom. All too often we paint Africa in the worst possible light, to solicit donations and activity. I am concerned that events such as Live8 and the events that preceded it pigeonhole Africa and Africans. The countries in which I have lived and worked have been poor, but there has been enormous spirit there—in many ways a greater spirit than we sometimes see in the United Kingdom. There is also more entrepreneurship, with people selling produce and so on, and a positive spirit. We need to reflect that positive view of Africa, too.
	Africa is also rich in resources, such as oil, diamonds and fertile land in places such as Zimbabwe. It used to be said that Zimbabwe could feed the African nation, yet look where we are now.
	I also want to comment on the HIV/AIDS pandemic–not on the social side of the problem but on the economic development element. In Botswana I managed 750 staff, one third of whom either had full-blown AIDS or were HIV positive. As well as creating a medical problem and a social problem for the families, that has an enormous impact on business in the country, with massive numbers of people being employed to cover for those who are too sick, when the drugs are not working. That in turn has a knock-on effect on poverty within a country.
	The intellectual capital of the nation is dying prematurely. One third of the staff who worked for me were affected, but among the graduates coming out of the university the proportion was much higher—so literally, the future of the nation was dying.
	We would all have a problem imagining what would happen if we were diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, but imagine one third of all people in this country being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Imagine the impact that that has on the psychology of the whole nation.
	I want to be brief, so I shall draw my comments to a close, and I want to end on a positive note. I believe that Africa does not have to deteriorate. The continent is not doomed to failure. Friends and colleagues with whom I have worked across Africa are strong and resourceful people, in what can often be a land of plenty. I believe that as politicians, we need to help them establish free trade and free elections—and the rest will follow.

Celia Barlow: We have come a long way since the days when our nation's aid policy was little more than a tool for big business assisting market penetration and furthering the reaches of our commerce, but hastening the decline of African nations into further poverty and helplessness. Such short-termism led the 1980s to be called the lost decade by those working for Africa's development. I am glad that this Government have given much time to correcting such injustices since coming to power in 1997.
	Thanks to our first years in power, policies that led to events such as the Pergau dam affair have been legislated against. That has increased the effectiveness and benefits of our assistance to poor countries. Today we stand at the cusp of another landmark in our effort to support the people of Africa. The radical proposals to offer debt relief, increased spending on aid and enhanced access to the world's trading systems for poor countries, as outlined to the House in recent days by the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for International Development, have my wholehearted support.
	Before I describe my concerns and ambitions with regard to Africa policy, I want to emphasise just how significant this country's contribution to international development has been in recent years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said in his eloquent maiden speech, it will be a fine achievement when our spending on aid reaches the UN target figure of 0.7 per cent. of GNP, but we shall then join a select group of only five nations.
	Our policy directives that cut conditionality, encourage spending on health and education and eradicate the hypocrisy of tied aid have placed Britain at the forefront of development practice, and should be a source of great pride to the people of our country. However, as the campaign to make poverty history reaches its climax, having successfully mobilised a whole nation, we must stress that what will be achieved at this year's great conferences will be but one milestone on an extremely long road. Significant though it is and painstaking though the work involved has been, we must all prepare ourselves and our constituents for the fact that many more victories will need to be won before the people of Africa unlock the potential of their great continent. History may well recall this year as the turning point in Africa's renaissance, but it is our job, in the here and now, to look forward and see just how our assistance may be put to best use.
	First, I want to raise an issue involving the two leading African institutions, the African Union and NEPAD, the New Partnership for Africa's Development. The Africa Commission's report repeatedly stresses the importance of those institutions as arbiters of aid and good governance for the region. I wholeheartedly support that sentiment, but I would like the possibility of strengthening and reforming those institutions to be investigated, so that they could be better equipped for the challenges ahead.
	It is with regret that I point out the failure of those institutions to deal adequately with the situations that they faced in Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast and Sudan. On each occasion, intervention by northern powers was eventually needed, and often occurred regrettably late owing to the failure of the African Union to deal decisively with what was happening. Today we mourn the suffering of ordinary Zimbabwean people at the hands of their country's pernicious dictator, a situation on which the African Union seems unable or unwilling to act. If the African Union is fully to earn the trust of us donors, it must demonstrate time and again to the people whom it serves that it is willing to fight for social justice and good governance.
	A lesson that we Europeans have learned recently is that transcontinental union must fully serve the needs of every citizen, not just its political elite, if the trust of citizens is to be bestowed on it. We should not shy from a reform agenda in our Africa policies. That would be perfectly in keeping with the philosophy of a Government who have offered investment in return for reform in many domestic policies since coming to power.
	There are many links in the chain leading from Government assistance to application in the field. Often the weakest link is the last, where aid money is actually spent and distributed among the grass roots. There are several reasons for that, one of which is the difficulty in finding lots of field workers with the capacity and skills required to do such a difficult job well. Another is the challenge of working in communities that often lack the infrastructure and representative leadership through which to work. We must therefore focus much of our attention on ensuring that those administering our aid budget in the field are fully trained and supported, and on ensuring that the community structures and representation are in place to make the link between aid worker and community seamless.
	The increasing role of non-governmental organisations has changed the nature of aid in recent years. At their best, NGOs can form a bond with local communities that would be impossible for national and multinational donors to achieve, and they can offer an extremely efficient solution to developmental challenges. But we must also accept that poor practice exists, and now that we are increasing funding to Africa so dramatically, public and media scrutiny of NGO activity will surely be heightened.
	I want to see an increase in the independent monitoring of all development work, including NGO activity in Africa. The fact remains that many of the communities in which aid work is carried out are poorly educated, poorly connected and poorly represented. They are communities without a voice, and as such they are rarely in a position to speak out when poor practice occurs. Due to the competitive funding process, it is a rarity for organisations to admit failure voluntarily, which is a shame, because the developmental sector would benefit tremendously from greater sharing of information and from the shared learning of experience.
	It would be a great sadness if the public were to become disheartened or cynical about assistance to Africa. That is why we need to be honest about the challenges of working there, to be honest about the time that it will take to achieve success, and to do all that we can to promote transparency in the aid process—from top to bottom. For the first time in a generation, there is real cause for optimism among those of us who care about Africa's future and its people, cultures and ecology. If we fail in our endeavours this year, the opportunity could well be lost for yet another generation. We cannot let this happen. It would be unforgivable.

Mark Simmonds: The debate is timely and important, primarily but not exclusively because of the G8 meeting next week, and also because of the UK presidency of the European Union, the millennium development summit in September, and the World Trade Organisation meeting in Hong Kong in December. The year 2005 is vital for Africa. The Trade Justice Movement and Make Poverty History are to be congratulated on keeping the issues at the forefront of the political agenda.
	Accepted analysis is that the House is at its best when being confrontational, yet despite its consensual nature the debate has been informed, intelligent and constructive. The high quality of the debate was begun by the Secretary of State in his excellent opening remarks and continued in the response from my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell), the shadow Secretary of State. Both of them made excellent speeches.
	There were other excellent contributions and I shall highlight a few of them. The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) made an impressive maiden speech which was informed, fluent and passionate. He entwined African and Northern Ireland issues in a skilful way. The whole House will know that he has made significant contributions to peace and progress in Northern Ireland. His personal courage is recognised in all parts of the House. I look forward to further significant contributions from him.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay), in a typically polished contribution, highlighted education and health as important building blocks in alleviating poverty. He also focused on the injustices currently being perpetrated in Zimbabwe, and rightly emphasised the failures of the African Union and South Africa to do more to put pressure on Mugabe to end his tyrannical actions, which damage the rest of Africa, too, especially as significant progress is being made elsewhere on the continent.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) has tremendous knowledge in this field and admirably chaired the Select Committee on International Development in the last Parliament. He highlighted climate change and conflict, which afflict the poorest communities. The poorest people suffer the most. He rightly highlighted the importance of the interrelationship between those factors.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) made a lucid speech, drawing on his African experience. He rightly highlighted the damage to the alleviation of poverty in Africa that could be done by the anti-free trade movement and the anti-globalisation movement. He highlighted the necessity for us to open our markets in Europe and articulated the failings of the protectionist vision and the necessity to remove obstacles to wealth creation and the encouragement of private investment.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) gave a typically articulate and powerful speech, reflecting on the terrible problems that afflict Darfur at present, with passionate and detailed examples. He will be aware that my views on that issue coincide with his. It is a great shame that the international community has not done more; it is attempting to do too little, too late.
	It is our long-term objective to ensure that developing African countries graduate from aid dependency to functioning democracies with successful economies. Like the Government, we are committed to working towards the 2013 UN target of spending 0.7 per cent. of national income on aid. It is clear that well spent aid works, and the best example of that is the eradication of smallpox. British aid, especially, has helped to immunise millions of children against polio.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield rightly highlighted the fact that the quality of aid is just as important as the quantity, so the Government have an obligation to ensure that UK taxpayers' money is spent effectively and transparently. The European Union is currently widely recognised as one of the least effective aid channels because only 52 per cent. of EU overseas development aid goes to low-income countries. My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) rightly raised that point in his thoughtful contribution.
	Announcements have been made today on progress made with Nigeria's debt relief, and some of the ongoing issues regarding debt relief were highlighted by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). Before the HIPC initiative, heavily-indebted countries were spending more on debt service than health and education combined, as the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) rightly pointed out, although he is sadly no longer in the Chamber.
	Money saved through the cancellation of debt must be used effectively to alleviate poverty. Well managed debt relief has produced many success stories—Uganda and Mozambique are but two recent examples. We support the HIPC initiative and the principle of 100 per cent. cancellation of debts to multilateral institutions. We welcome the debt reduction packages that have been approved for 27 countries. However, responsible lending and borrowing are vital to ensure that there is a sustainable end to the debt crisis. The international credit standing of recipient countries must not be compromised, and future loans must be monitored so that we do not have a cycle of borrowing and debt cancellation.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) rightly highlighted the importance of trade. Although aid and debt relief are necessary, economic development and international trade offer the best hope of long-term sustainable solutions to poverty and suffering in Africa. International trade has lifted up to 500 million people out of poverty in China and south-east Asia. Much of that was achieved through an export-orientated approach that exploited foreign investment to boost local capacity and allow the countries to compete internationally. Not only international trade is needed to maximise the benefits the benefits that trade can bring to Africa, but trade in African domestic markets and pan-African trade are needed too.
	Sadly, the protectionist trade policies exercised by the US and UN, such as tariff escalation, which undermines private sector development and diversification, have come at the expense of developing countries in Africa. That is nothing short of a disgrace. For example, US cotton subsidies mean that African farmers are competing not against US farmers, but against the US Treasury. Developing countries' agricultural sectors are being crippled because the EU dumps heavily subsidised commodities that are sold at well below the cost of production. EU consumers and taxpayers, via the common agricultural policy, are being forced to finance policies that exacerbate and perpetuate poverty. Current trade restrictions are the biggest impediment to economic advancement and poverty reduction in the developing world.
	Some significant bodies believe that infant industry protection and bans on imports into developing countries would help to stimulate their economies, but history is littered with protectionist folly. Import substitution policies insulate local manufacturers and producers from competition, so local consumers consequently pay inflated prices for lower-quality goods while the local industry is unable to sell in international markets. We understand that free trade cannot happen immediately, but we are committed to working towards genuine free and fairer trade for developing countries, especially through the transition period.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) made a knowledgeable speech in which he highlighted the fact that tackling preventable diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV and educating and training Africans in health care are essential if we are to end poverty. Disease hinders economic activity. Both my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt), in a moving and intelligent speech, and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), in a powerful contribution that was allied to personal experience, rightly highlighted the necessity to alleviate HIV/AIDS in Africa.
	Many hon. Members rightly highlighted the importance of education, as it is the cornerstone for an economically prosperous society. We welcome the progress made so far, in particular the removal of school fees in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, but much more remains to be done.
	Historically, African Governments have suffered from a lack of accountability and a lack of institutions to facilitate a pluralistic civil society, as well as endemic corruption. That has led to chronic political instability and regressive economic performance, impoverishing many millions of Africans. Corrupt leadership, combined with a history of human rights abuses, inter-ethnic rivalries and, more recently, the HIV pandemic, have left many parts of Africa lagging behind the rest of the world in creating markets, stable societies, trading and improving the macro and micro-economic well-being of its citizens. The developed world is morally right to, and must, assist, but ultimately the solutions and resolution lie with Africa itself.